Salesforce Announces Unified Knowledge, Helping Service Organizations Use Third-Party Data to Power Generative AI and Self-Service Experiences

Salesforce today announced Unified Knowledge, a new solution that integrates organizational knowledge resources from disparate third-party systems into Salesforce, helping service agents be more efficient and resolve customer cases faster. Coupled with customer data in Salesforce Data Cloud, this aggregated knowledge helps produce accurate, relevant generative AI content for service agents to deliver faster, more personalized customer experiences.

Why it matters: Seventy-nine percent of service organizations are investing in AI to support their agents. But 76% of executives struggle to scale AI effectively, largely because of disconnected systems and siloed data. 

Go deeper: Built on the Einstein Trust Layer, Einstein for Service uses AI to improve service team productivity and customer experience. Historically, these outputs have been powered by the unstructured and structured customer data on Data Cloud. 

With Unified Knowledge, these AI models are further informed by Salesforce knowledge articles and resources from third-party sources such as SharePoint, Confluence, Google Drive, and company websites. This comprehensive data foundation grounds Einstein for Service and its generative AI capabilities to provide the right answers at the right time to agents and AI assistants. 

Built through a strategic partnership with Zoomin, Unified Knowledge amplifies capabilities such as: 

• Knowledge Answers in Bots: Automatically generate answers to customer inquiries within a bot, based on a company’s complete internal and external knowledge base. Retail customers, for example, can use bots to access knowledge and generate answers to questions that require information from third-party sources, such as clothing care instructions that come from a manufacturer.
• Einstein Copilot for Mobile Workers: With Einstein Copilot and Unified Knowledge, mobile workers can ask a question and get an instant response, sourced from the full slate of a company’s organizational knowledge. For instance, if a technician is having trouble installing a dishwasher, they can chat with Copilot to troubleshoot the issue in real time.
• Search Answers: Generate answers to both agent and customer questions grounded in a company’s trusted knowledge base and surfaced directly within a customer portal or agent console. With this capability, a banking customer can search for and receive step-by-step instructions, sourced from multiple knowledge articles, to resolve issues such as canceling a credit card or requesting a credit increase without any agent assistance.

In addition to Service Cloud, Unified Knowledge can also collect and integrate information into Salesforce Field Service, Sales Cloud, Health Cloud, and Financial Services Cloud. 

Salesforce perspective: “In service, more knowledge and more context translates to better answers for agents and customers. Agents and self-serve customers already have the benefit of a full customer profile from the information in Data Cloud. Now, with Unified Knowledge, they also have access to all external organizational data – creating a truly comprehensive foundation to fuel both the successful adoption of generative AI as well as the delivery of faster, more meaningful customer experiences.” – Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM, Service Cloud

Now, with Unified Knowledge, they also have access to all external organizational data – creating a truly comprehensive foundation to fuel both the successful adoption of generative AI as well as the delivery of faster, more meaningful customer experiences.

Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM, Service Cloud

Reaction to the news: “Unified Knowledge is helping us deliver proactive, predictive, and preventative service to our customers. We have over 500 agents who are educating our customers on different aspects of our products. Now, all of our resources and data points can be unified through the same system, quickly, so our agents can provide solutions faster. Every agent can deliver consistent and repeatable service to improve customer engagement and increase organizational productivity.” – Dharam Rai, VP, Global Customer Success & Experience, Sonos

Availability:

• Unified Knowledge is available for free today in open beta for Salesforce customers with Service Cloud Unlimited Edition, Einstein 1 Service Edition, or the Knowledge Add-On.
• Knowledge Answers in Bots will be generally available in June 2024; Einstein Copilot for Mobile Workers and Search Answers are generally available today.

Learn more:

• Tune into the Smarter Service Starts With Knowledge event on Salesforce+ on May 7, 2024 at 10:30 a.m. PT or watch on-demand
• Learn how to increase productivity with Service Cloud

Any unreleased services or features referenced here are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.