7 Things You Need to Know About Artificial Intelligence and CRM

Artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to create more than 800,000 net-new jobs by 2021, which should help offset the jobs it will replace, according to a new IDC White Paper, commissioned by Salesforce. AI could eliminate 5 percent of jobs, IDC said, and 49 percent of job activities could be impacted by AI.

CRM is expected to be one of the areas that will benefit greatly from AI – which is welcome news for Salesforce and its AI play, Einstein. According to IDC and Salesforce, “AI-powered CRM activities will cover a large spectrum of use cases and touch almost all facets of an enterprise, including accelerating sales cycles, improving lead generation and qualification, personalizing marketing campaigns and lowering costs of support calls.”

“AI is impacting all sectors of the economy and every business. For the CRM market—the fastest-growing category in enterprise software—the impact of AI will be profound, ushering in new levels of productivity for employees and empowering companies to drive even better experiences for their customers,” Keith Block, vice chairman, president and COO, Salesforce said in a statement. “For companies embracing AI, it’s critical that they create new workforce development programs to ensure employees are prepared for this next wave of innovation.”

According to the report, Salesforce customers should account for $293 billion of the total aggregated revenue and more than 390,000 of those jobs by the year 2021.

Click through the slideshow for 7 other takeaways.

Still not convinced your job is safe from robots? Check out 7 jobs of the future that will be held by humans.