At the Salesforce World Tour New York 2023 event, Salesforce expanded on its Apple partnerships.
Salesforce announced expanded capabilities of its generative AI assistant Einstein Copilot, enhanced integrations with Apple offerings and more today at the Salesforce World Tour New York 2023 event. The addition of the Data Cloud Vector Database to the Salesforce Data Cloud will allow both the Salesforce Data Cloud and Einstein Copilot to handle unstructured data.
Salesforce announced several other enhancements to its business software, particularly within Data Cloud for Advertisers. These products could be useful for a wide variety of teams, including IT, sales, customer service, marketing and commerce.
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AI enhancements to Salesforce Data Cloud
Einstein Copilot
A major enhancement to Salesforce Data Cloud is Data Cloud Vector Database, coming in a pilot program in February 2024. Data Cloud Vector Database is integrated vector database support that allows for the use of a wide variety of data types. Unstructured data — e.g., PDFs, email, audio and social media content — will be combined with structured data — e.g., purchase history, customer support cases and product inventory.
Einstein Copilot, Salesforce’s generative AI assistant, will be able to use unstructured data to respond to questions or perform analysis; it will access this data through Salesforce Data Cloud. Einstein Copilot will be generally available in February 2024.
“This transforms every piece of data — from emails to social media posts to audio — into actionable insights using AI, CRM, automation, AI, Einstein Copilot, and analytics,” said Rahul Auradkar, executive vice president and general manager of Unified Data Services and Einstein at Salesforce, in a press release.
Possible use cases of Einstein Copilot include:
- Customer service: Einstein Copilot’s unstructured data will be able to be used for customer service. The example Salesforce gave is of a chatbot pulling answers from articles for a customer visiting a self-service page.
- IT teams: Einstein Copilot can be used to help IT teams uncover problems in unstructured content produced in machine operations, such as logs, sensor readings or image and audio records.
- Sales reps: Einstein Copilot can help sales reps get more information about a potential client company before meeting with that company’s representatives.
Einstein Copilot Search
Another enhancement for Salesforce Data Cloud will be Einstein Copilot Search, which will be in pilot in February 2024. Einstein Copilot Search draws from data across Data Cloud to provide smart suggestions for searches. It will be useful for problem-solving tasks performed by sales, customer service, marketing, commerce and IT teams. For example, Einstein Copilot search will be able to link a customer’s emails and phone calls to their formal support ticket history to assist a customer service representative.
Expanded Salesforce and Apple partnership
Apple Messaging, Apple Pay and augmented reality will be accessible directly in certain Salesforce products. Salesforce and Apple have had a strategic partnership since 2018.
Specifically, Apple Messages for Business in Service Cloud, generally available today with Salesforce’s Service Cloud Digital Engagement, will let businesses set up live chat experiences with customers for customer service, product recommendations, tracking shipments or setting up appointments. Customers can pay for services and products with Apple Pay within the Messenger app.
Augmented reality with Apple’s ARKit will be available within the Salesforce Field Service mobile app in the summer of 2024. With it, field technicians can capture 3D renderings of real locations to make planning and installations easier.
The Salesforce Field Service iOS widget will be available for iPhones in the summer of 2024. It provides a quick view of key account information in Salesforce Field Service.
AWS partnership and more Salesforce news
At Salesforce World Tour New York 2023, Salesforce’s AWS partnership was highlighted and other news was announced.
Details about Salesforce’s partnership with AWS
Salesforce reiterated the company’s partnership with AWS announced in November 2023, in which Salesforce expanded its use of AWS in multiple ways:
- Salesforce began offering products on AWS Marketplace.
- Some Einstein Studio Copilot capabilities will be able to be integrated with Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock.
- Amazon Connect Chat came to Salesforce’s Service Cloud Digital Engagement.
- Amazon Connect forecasting was added to Salesforce Service Cloud Omnichannel.
- Salesforce’s app builder Heroku will receive powerful new capabilities from AWS services that allow it to become a factory for generative AI-first apps.
News about Trailblazer Career Marketplace, Unlimited Edition+, Data Cloud for Advertisers
Salesforce opened a new jobs site for careers within the Salesforce ecosystem called Trailblazer Career Marketplace, which is open today to Salesforce partners.
Salesforce announced Unlimited Edition+, a package of Salesforce technologies for companies interested in getting into generative AI, data and CRM. UE+ is now in general availability.
New integrations are coming to Data Cloud for Advertisers. Data Cloud for Advertisers will be able to connect to Google Display & Video 360 for personalized ads across channels. Data Cloud for Advertisers will be able to connect to LinkedIn, letting advertisers target specific groups of professionals using Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud product usage data from their own apps and LinkedIn.
Note: TechRepublic is covering the Salesforce World Tour New York 2023 event virtually.