"Hey Einstein" -- Salesforce Brings Voice to Every Customer Experience

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DREAMFORCE 2019 -- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the global leader in CRM, is bringing the power of voice to every customer experience spanning the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform and enabling millions of CRM users to talk to Salesforce. With Einstein Voice Assistant guiding every action, insight and prediction, Salesforce users will be more productive—from anywhere. And new Einstein Voice Skills will enable developers and admins to build custom voice-powered apps for employees across every role and industry, in just a matter of clicks. In addition, new solutions for service and sales teams will apply natural language processing to voice conversations, and deliver insights that drive smarter, more personalized customer engagement.

"Voice is a huge shift for the industry and will be as impactful in businesses as it's been in our homes," said Bret Taylor, President and Chief Product Officer, Salesforce. "With Einstein, Salesforce is bringing the power of voice to every business, giving everyone an intelligent, trusted guide at work."

Voice Enters the Workplace

Voice is rapidly emerging as the user interface for our lives. Nearly half of U.S. households are already using a voice-activated device for everyday activities like getting driving directions, dictating text messages, playing their favorite songs and even turning on home appliances – all without lifting a finger or tapping a keyboard. And, just like every other computing revolution that came before it—cloud, social, mobile and AI—Salesforce is helping companies bring voice's immense potential to CRM to transform the way we work.

Talk to Salesforce Anytime, Anywhere with Einstein Voice

Last year at Dreamforce 2018, Salesforce introduced Einstein Voice Assistant, allowing sales reps to talk to Salesforce. With Einstein Voice Assistant, routine CRM transactions – creating or updating customer records, getting personalized daily briefings and exploring dashboards – can be done conversationally, so sales reps can keep their business moving forward and focus on what matters most, customer success.

But every employee can use a guide to help them be more productive and provide a smarter, more frictionless way to ask questions, get insights and predictions or initiate a task. Today, Salesforce announced it will expand the capabilities of Einstein Voice Assistant for any role or industry, giving every app built on Salesforce a voice. This is powered by new Einstein Voice Skills, which will empower admins and developers to create custom voice apps across the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform in just a few clicks.

Build Custom Voice Apps for Any Business Process

Using Einstein Voice Skills, companies will be able to create custom voice-powered apps to reimagine workflows and processes—replacing any manual data entry or manual Salesforce navigation that may impede productivity. From a simple set-up page, developers and admins will be able to build custom skills for any CRM action—such as updating a field, creating a task or reading out a prediction—and select the Salesforce fields or objects that inform each action.

For example, an admin or developer can build a custom voice-powered assistant for a field technician that enables her to verbally and instantly check on a service history while en route to her next customer, Acme, just by saying "Hey Einstein, what is Acme's recent service history?" Meanwhile, admins can also build and deploy a separate, custom voice app for service managers that has a seat at the table for weekly leadership meetings, offering insight on open service cases in top regions, guidance on the team's overall CSAT performance and more. Each app is purpose-built for the specific needs and processes of each role. Plus, admins can also control how information will be read back to the user, including the ability to offer next steps or follow-up tasks within the response, and which channels and devices that the skill is accessible on, such smart speakers or phones.

Voice Intelligence: Smarter and More Productive Service and Sales Experiences

Powered by Einstein, new voice intelligence applies natural language processing to call transcriptions – providing sales and service teams with insights and trends that will drive smarter, more personalized customer engagement:

• New Service Cloud Voice: Service Cloud Voice integrates telephony inside Service Cloud, unifying phone, digital channels and CRM data in real-time in one centralized console. Service Cloud Voice can also integrate with transcription services  that convert voice to text in real time, enabling Einstein to serve up relevant AI-powered recommended responses, knowledge articles and next best actions as service agents are on voice calls.
• New Einstein Call Coaching: Now with Einstein Call Coaching, our newest Sales Cloud capability, managers are able to see insights and trends within conversational data. Natural language processing identifies keywords in sales call transcripts, alerting managers to trends like a spike in competitor mentions, or best practices on topics like objection handling or pricing discussions. Those insights can then be used to provide sales reps with personalized coaching on how to improve the customer buying experience.

Voice Interoperability: Einstein Voice for Any Device

In September, Salesforce joined Amazon and leading technology companies to announce the Voice Interoperability Initiative, a new program to ensure voice-enabled products provide customers with choice and flexibility through multiple, interoperable voice services. As part of this, Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills will be compatible with a variety of devices, from smart speakers to smartphones–whether it's the Einstein Smart Speaker that will be unveiled at Dreamforce 2019 (not for sale), the new Salesforce Mobile App, or customers' preferred devices.

Einstein at Dreamforce

Check out the latest innovations from Einstein at Dreamforce, November 19-22, 2019. Chief Scientist Richard Socher will host a visionary keynote (Tuesday, November 19, 4:30 PM PT in Moscone West) on the future of AI and a first look at the new era of customer experiences that Voice will enable. Join us for the Einstein keynote (Wednesday, November 20, 9:00 AM PT in Moscone North) to learn more about Einstein Voice, and visit us at the Einstein Summit on the third floor of Moscone West.

Dreamforce 2019

Dreamforce is the world's largest software conference with more than 171,000 registered attendees and 13 million online viewers. Bringing together thought leaders, industry pioneers, and Trailblazers, Dreamforce is the ultimate expression of Salesforce's values of trust, customer success, innovation and equality. With more than 2,700+ sessions, Trailblazers in every role and industry will learn how to achieve a 360-degree view of their customers and get hands-on with Salesforce's latest product innovations including AI, voice, integration and online learning. To learn more, please visit: www.salesforce.com/dreamforce.

Additional Information

• To learn more about Salesforce Einstein, please visit: https://www.salesforce.com/products/einstein/overview/
• Take the Get Smart With Salesforce Einstein trail on Trailhead
• Find out more on why Salesforce is going all in on Voice
• Images of Einstein Voice can be downloaded from the Salesforce Newsroom: https://salesforce.com/news
• View thousands of hours of Dreamforce content, including keynotes, sessions and interviews online at http://salesforce.com/live

Availability

• Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills will be in beta in February 2020 and are expected to be generally available in 2021.
• Service Cloud Voice will be in pilot in February 2020 and is expected to be generally available in June 2020.
• Einstein Call Coaching is currently in pilot and is expected to be generally available in June 2020.

About Salesforce

Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer to their customers in the digital age. Founded in 1999, Salesforce enables companies of every size and industry to take advantage of powerful technologies—cloud, mobile, social, internet of things, artificial intelligence, voice and blockchain—to create a 360° view of their customers. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit https://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

SOURCE Salesforce

Related Links

https://www.salesforce.com/