Salesforce's Ball: Einstein Is Trailblazing with AI

Introduced a little more than a year ago, Salesforce Einstein is a layer of artificial intelligence (AI) that delivers predictions and recommendations based on users’ unique business processes and customer data. Built right into the Salesforce CRM platform, Einstein is crucial for the present and future of the company and its partner ecosystem. It’s also critical for what is being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a wave of technological innovations that blur the lines between the physical, digital and biological worlds.

Salesforce Einstein is currently delivering nearly a half-billion predictions daily. The company reports seeing improvements of 300 percent in lead conversion rates and revenue increases of 7 to 15 percent for Sales Cloud Einstein.

So don’t be fooled, the four-foot tall plush Einstein figure roaming around the Moscone Center at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference wants more than hugs and selfies — Einstein wants into your business.

“In business, AI helps us do a better job of connecting to the customer,” said John Ball, senior vice president and general manager for Einstein and Salesforce. “AI for us, at the end of day, is about doing the core things better than ever before — sales, service, marketing, commerce and application development. And, this is the opportunity for all of you to embrace AI and transform your companies to focus on the customer.

Ball made his comments as part of the Salesforce Einstein Keynote: Blaze Trails with AI.

Over the past year, Salesforce has released 16 new and pilot features for Einstein, with the promise of more to come. Investments in Einstein have resulted in the general availability of Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud, and there will be more investments made to add Einstein to all the company’s clouds, Ball stated.

Earlier in the week at Dreamforce, the company introduced myEinstein, a packet of tools that allows developers to build their own AI-powered apps. The tools were  introduced in response to demands to address the customizations that are made in Sales Cloud and Service Cloud; more than 80 percent of records in Salesforce are built on customer objects.

Two new services included in myEinstein are Prediction Builder, which allows an admin to automatically create custom AI models that can predict outcomes for a field or object in Salesforce; and Einstein Bots, which can be trained to augment customer service workflows by automating tasks such as answering questions and retrieving information.

myEinstein also includes Einstein Vision & Language, which brings the power of deep learning to developers, and Einstein Discovery, to help uncover insights buried in data.

General availability for most of the myEinstein services in slated for the summer of 2018.

Taking a longer-term vision, Salesforce is working on an AI assistant for Einstein that will have natural language capability and the ability to read knowledge-based articles.