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enable their customers to access
the information they need to answer
any question they have about a
product or service offering, saving
time and increasing customer satis-
faction levels.”
The company said that one
MVNO will use the platform to an-
swer more than 20 million customer
requests in 2017 and deflect more
than 10 million calls from its call
center. These numbers are ex-
pected to top last year’s customer
support requests of 14 million and 9
million, respectively.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest
names in the CRM industry has
embraced AI in a new platform
tailored to channel partners,
SMBs and others. Salesforce’s
Service Cloud Einstein is using AI
to help these businesses deliver
proactive, personalized service
to customers.
“Customers today expect and
demand great service experienc-
es,” said Adam Blitzer, executive
vice president and general man-
ager for service and sales clouds at
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.”
For instance, the Einstein
Case Management module drives
faster service for cases that are
automatically classified as they
come in. High priority cases get
quickly routed to the next available
agent, for instance. By having AI
do everything related to customer
engagement, channel partners can
directly bring analytics and om-
nichannel supervision into market-
ing campaigns.
Einstein enables functions
such as automated lead-scoring
based on information pulled into
Salesforce’s system. Einstein can
aggregate a range of information,
such as whether a contact has
looked at marketing materials (e.g.
a webinar or whitepaper), and
cross-reference that to what their
role is within the target organiza-
tion in order to make a recommen-
dation for next steps.
It’s also meant to be intuitive for
users. “I can create a lead-man-
agement process with clicks, not
code,” Salesforce product marketing
executive vice president Stephanie
Buscemi said. “Salespeople who
use Einstein are not just smarter,
they’re also more productive.”
It may sound bleeding edge, but
there’s no doubt that AI will be an
increasing part of the technology
landscape for channel partners,
resellers and their customers. To-
day, 38 percent of enterprises are
already using AI, growing to 62 per-
cent by 2018, according to Forrest-
er Research. The firm also is pre-
dicting a 300 percent increase in AI
investments this year compared to
2016, while IDC believes AI will be
a $47 billion market by 2020.
Gartner, for its part, paints a
breathtaking picture.
“AI and machine learning have
reached a critical tipping point
and will increasingly augment and
extend virtually every technology-
enabled service, thing or applica-
tion. Creating intelligent systems
that learn, adapt and potentially act
autonomously rather than simply
execute predefined instructions is
a primary battleground for tech-
nology vendors through at least
2020,” the firm said in a recent
report. “AI and machine learning,
which include technologies such as
deep learning, neural networks and
natural-language processing, can
also encompass more advanced
systems that understand, learn, pre-
dict, adapt and potentially operate
autonomously. Systems can learn
and change future behavior, leading
to the creation of more intelligent
devices and programs.”
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May - June, 2017
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Channel
Vision