Salesforce Introduces Service Cloud Einstein, the World's #1 Intelligent Customer Service Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today announced Service Cloud Einstein, the world's #1 intelligent customer service platform. With Service Cloud Einstein, companies can use artificial intelligence to manage the increasing complexity of customer service and drive new levels of agent productivity and efficiency, while providing customers with a world-class, omni-channel service experience. Service Cloud Einstein adds a layer of intelligence to every service interaction, empowering all service employees to deliver incredible customer experiences—whether it is the agent, supervisor or mobile worker in the field.

Customer service has evolved from being a cost center to a growth driver, and leading companies are prioritizing customer service to increase brand loyalty. At the same time, customer service is becoming increasingly complex. New channels and technologies—from messaging and mobile apps to social networks and chatbots—are rapidly emerging, leaving many service organizations unsure of which channels to prioritize and the best way to empower service teams to create exceptional customer experiences. Service organizations need to strike a delicate balance between embracing emerging technologies, delivering exceptional service and maintaining operational excellence—and intelligence is the answer. According to Accenture, 79% of IT and business executives "agree that AI will help accelerate technology adoption throughout their organizations" and that "AI is poised to enable companies to improve the experience and outcome for every critical customer interaction."¹

Service Cloud Einstein: The World's #1 Intelligent Customer Service Platform

Fully connected to CRM data across sales, commerce, marketing and more, Service Cloud Einstein is the world's #1 intelligent customer service platform. With Service Cloud Einstein, every service employee gets smarter and has access to the insights needed to resolve any service issue quickly and efficiently to deliver a connected, personalized customer experience. 

• Einstein Supervisor: Now, contact center supervisors are empowered with real-time, omni-channel insights and AI-powered analytics to increase agent productivity and customer satisfaction. By combining real-time operational insights with smart data discovery, Einstein Supervisor empowers managers with real-time data like agent availability, queues and wait times, enabling them to take smarter actions. Einstein Supervisor can even predict customer satisfaction and make specific recommendations to improve the customer experience. For instance, a service supervisor at an appliance manufacturer gets an alert telling her there's an increase in calls coming from owners of a specific dishwasher model. Drilling into the data, she discovers all the cases involve dishwashers made during a three-month period at one factory. The supervisor alerts management, who then proactively alert other impacted customers and begin deploying mobile employees to fix all of the potentially impacted dishwashers—heading off what could have become a larger service issue.
• Einstein Case Management: Using machine learning, cases will automatically be escalated and classified as they come in. In addition, relevant information required to resolve cases, such as knowledge articles or videos, are automatically surfaced, saving agents valuable time and creating improved customer experiences. With Einstein Case Management, high priority cases get quickly routed to the next available agent who knows what the case is about before they even pick up the phone, making the experience seamless for the customer. Agent job satisfaction also increases, because they can spend more time resolving customer issues and less time asking routine questions.  For instance, a customer calling a networking device company could be asked a series of basic questions by a bot—name, reason for the call and serial number on the impacted device. After gathering the information, Einstein Case Management knows that the customer's home networking gateway is not working and can route the case to the best agent with key details about the issue, empowering the agent to dive into troubleshooting-mode and immediately fix the problem.
• Intelligent Mobile Service: More and more companies are providing service out in the field - whether it's a financial advisor going to meet with a new client or a nurse who provides in-home care. Though the use cases vary, customers expect great service wherever they are. With Intelligent Mobile Service, companies can now provide mobile employees with a connected service app on iOS and Android so they can deliver personalized, exceptional service anywhere. The mobile app uses advanced algorithms to optimize scheduling and routing, provides real-time access to complete CRM data and even has offline capabilities so mobile workers can be productive without cell coverage. For instance, when a solar panel repair request comes in, it is intelligently assigned to the best person for the job based on expertise and proximity. The app provides them with the customer's history, service issue and parts required for the job. The field tech is then routed to the closest warehouse to pick up the parts, so they can arrive at the customer's house with everything needed to fix the solar panels on the first visit.

Comments on the News:

• "Customers today expect and demand great service experiences," said Adam Blitzer, EVP and GM, Service and Sales Clouds, Salesforce. "Service Cloud Einstein empowers companies to transform any customer service interaction into a smart conversation that drives brand loyalty and creates customers for life."
• "At STANLEY Healthcare, our goal is to deliver superior patient care and service," said Steven Mascola, IT Director, STANLEY Healthcare. "We're excited about the introduction of Service Cloud Einstein and the opportunity to deliver even more personalized and connected support for our customers."
• "AI stands to dramatically improve how customer service organizations operate and connect with customers—the biggest hurdle for companies is just how do they get started," said R "Ray" Wang, Principal Analyst and Founder, Constellation Research. "By building AI directly into a service application, customer service organizations can start infusing AI into everything they do and start augmenting their customer experience capabilities."

Pricing and Availability

• Einstein Supervisor combines Omni-channel Supervisor with Analytics Cloud's Service Wave analytics app and Smart Data Discovery, all of which are generally available. Omni-channel Supervisor is included Service Cloud Enterprise edition and above. Service Wave starts at $75 per user, per month, and Smart Data Discovery pricing is based on the volume of data and number of users.
• Einstein Case Management will be available in pilot later this year. Pricing will be announced at the time of general availability. 
• Intelligent Mobile Service, also referred to as Field Service Lightning, is generally available as of February 13, 2017 and starts at $150 per user, per month for organizations that have at least one Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition Service Cloud license. Field Service Lightning is generally available for download in the App Store here and is available in pilot on Android.

Additional Information

• To learn more about Service Cloud Einstein, please visit: https://www.salesforce.com/service-cloud/overview/
• Discover how Service Cloud can help companies deliver personalized service to their customers via Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trail/service_cloud

Connect with Salesforce

• Like Salesforce on Facebook http://facebook.com/salesforce
• Follow @salesforce and @servicecloud on Twitter

Rights of ALBERT EINSTEIN are used with permission of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Represented exclusively by Greenlight.

About Salesforce

Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. 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 http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

¹ Accenture, Technology Vision 2017: Technology for People

SOURCE Salesforce

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