The latest Summer '23 features have been released by Salesforce. If you are looking to upgrade your Salesforce instance, the right Salesforce Implementation Partner can help you with the implementation of these new features and training of your Salesforce admins to make your operations more efficient and productive.
Here’s a look at the top 10 features from the Latest Salesforce Summer ’23 Release
1. Integrated Analytics Services
The summer ’23 release comes with a consolidated interface for Analytics and Slack. Which means you can now enjoy a seamless engagement with all your CRM Analytics, Lightning reports and dashboards, and Einstein Discovery models and forecasts. The Analytics tab now comes with powerful search capabilities and recommendations, giving you access to organized statistics that you can turn to for all your Lightning dashboards and CRM Analytics.
Using the Post to Slack feature on Lightning dashboards, you can share information such as dashboards and CRM data with colleagues throughout Slack workspaces easily.
2. Unified Analytics
With the new release of Analytics Home, you no longer need to deal with analytics spread over different products. This new feature unifies all your CRM analytics data in a single place, allowing you easy access to information. Now you can get access to a consolidated view of all your CRM reports and dashboards in a structured and organised way, so you can easily access all the information you need to take quick decisions.
3. Customer Data Platform reimagined as Data Cloud
In the new release, Salesforce has transformed the erstwhile Customer Data Platform into Salesforce Data Cloud with all the necessary documentation and additional features.
4. Barring Unverified Emails Sent by Guest Users
This feature update disallows companies from sending emails from unverified email addresses of guest users. However, Salesforce customers that have a validated company-wide email address will not be impacted by this update. In such cases, the sender’s email address always updates to the authenticated email address. With the Latest Summer ’23 release, this enforced change effectively disallows shadowy emails from being sent by a guest user using an unverified email address.
5. Upgrade to Hyperforce Using Hyperforce Assistant
The latest Summer ’23 release comes with Hyperforce Assistant which streamlines the upgrade to Hyperforce. The new Hyperforce Assistant comes with the latest Hyperforce messaging authorization feature that has better in-built reference checks to support Salesforce organizations that have a large number of Apex classes. Hyperforce Assistant is available in all editions of Salesforce Lightning as well as Classic.
Once admins schedule the upgrade, they will be asked to initiate the assistant. Admins can activate the assistant manually in case you are scheduled for a major migration. During Setup, you can enter “Hyperforce Assistant” in the Quick Find Box and select the appropriate option.
6. Accelerated Quote Template Creation With OmniStudio Document Generation
Quote generation is now much simpler with this latest add on. With Salesforce CPQ Plus, your reps can easily create templates to generate quotes for your customers. You can generate a Microsoft Word file in the format and language of your preference, insert tokens and upload the document. Then associate the inserted tokens with relevant Salesforce fields. Your sales reps can then start utilizing the template once it is active. They can also easily convert their documents to PDFs. This Salesforce CPQ plus update is available in both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience.
7. Real-Time Collaboration with Partner Relationship Management for Slack App
This feature improves communication and collaboration across internal teams and external partners by bringing them together in a single channel using Slack. With Slack you can automate key business processes, and update and share records easily across collaborators. Partner Relationship Management for Slack connects your Salesforce CRM with partners seamlessly, with easy access to important information through partner portals, thereby boosting productivity, and fostering better communication. This upgrade impacts the Enterprise and Unlimited editions of Salesforce. The mandatory requirement to access this feature upgrade is to be a Slack Enterprise Grid user.
8. Codeless flow of External Data into Flow Builder
This new feature allows admins to use Flow Builder to automate processes that involve external data without the need for coding by developing an HTTP callout action through a web service API. Once you enter the API details, Flow Builder automatically generates a reusable callout action which admins can immediately deploy in Flow Builder and across Salesforce. This commonly used feature has witnessed several enhancements since the last update. Now it is easier to configure and edit the API responses to HTTP callouts. This allows the use of external data inflows to be simpler and more declarative. This upgrade is available across all editions of the Lightning Experience – Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited and Developer.
The reason why this feature has been introduced is that APIs often go through modifications, such as the addition of a new field or updation in an existing field in an external system. Admins with the relevant permissions in Manage Flow and Customize Applications can create an HTTP callout action.
Previously, admins had to modify the auto-generated API definition in JSON to modify the HTTP callout action. With the latest update, this action can be modified with just a few clicks. Instead of editing and configuring JSON to parse the API response, admins can easily select data types for fields. With this new feature, admins will also receive more lucid error messages, simplifying the troubleshooting process and prevent runtime issues.
9. Quick Create Sandbox to Enhance Productivity
Quick Create Full Sandbox is another new upcoming feature of the Salesforce’s Summer 23 Release. This feature accelerates sandbox creation and refreshing. This update means no additional actions will be required from Salesforce admins as it is the default setting. This feature will be available on eligible Hyperforce instances. Salesforce will initiate a staggered release after June 10, 2023, and users with the Manage Sandbox permission can use this feature.
10. Process Builder is on its way out.
Rules have changed. Process Builder does not have the capability of adding new processes anymore. However, you can still activate/deactivate existing processes or edit them. Having said that, it is recommended that for most use cases, you migrate to Flow Builder. The upgraded flow builder can take automation of business processes to a whole new level.
Summing Up
With the Summer ’23 release, Salesforce endeavours to make your daily tasks simpler, more efficient, and productive. The Summer ’23 release is designed to empower organizations to improve their engagement with customers, automate businesses processes, and drive growth.
At Girikon, a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner, we recognize that staying up-to-date with these new changes in the Salesforce platform and leveraging the new capabilities are key to maximizing your Salesforce RoI. Contact one of our experts today to know more about how you can make the most of these exciting new features of the Summer ’23 Release.
What is generative CRM?
Generative CRM combines the power of generative AI with CRM data to boost productivity and efficiency of teams. It has the power to execute limitless functions such as responding to queries, generating conversational text, suggesting next steps, drafting emails and more. The beauty of Generative AI is that the more people use it, the smarter and faster it will become.
In the coming months and years, Generative CRM will effortlessly perform tedious everyday tasks, freeing up time of your teams so they can focus on more important tasks. With the ability to comb the internet for relevant data in a matter of seconds, it can help draft more meaningful responses thereby significantly boosting the efficiency of teams.
How generative CRM can boost productivity, efficiency, and customer relationships
People spend hours executing ordinary day to day tasks. They sift through data and information, wrack their brains to come up with new social media ad campaigns, iterate multiple times to create a perfect email pitch for a prospective customer, and engage in a fire fight to resolve issues of dissatisfied customers. What if they had a tool to streamline all of that, irrespective of the industry or department they work in?
Generative AI is on the brink of redefining CRM across companies in the coming years. Let us dive deeper to understand how this new age tech, when combined with your CRM, can help teams become more productive and deliver stunning customer experiences.
The employee view
If you are a new sales rep, and you have just been assigned a new account, it would take you many hours, perhaps even days to get an overview of the company, catch up on the latest company activities, discover the right contacts, and prepare an introductory email. With Generative AI, all this can be done in a matter of seconds by your CRM. So you can refine that email and connect with the right person sooner than ever.
This is the potential of generative CRM. When the power of generative AI combines with your CRM data, it unlocks a never seen before power of your CRM.
The view across teams
Generative AI is poised to reshape how teams work across departments in the years to come. It will empower enterprises to quickly and effortlessly generate AI-driven content across multiple departments -sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, and IT.
Service teams would have the power to create automated, smarter, more personalized chatbots that can engage with customers just the way a human rep would, but much faster. They would have the ability to anticipate, comprehend and respond to customer requests faster than ever.
For marketers, generative CRM can help in quickly creating accurate, compelling product descriptions that are optimized for web search.
Here are some key benefits that generative CRM would deliver going forward.
Reduce time to value
AI has already been around for a while with Salesforce Einstein delivering over 200 billion predictions every day. Today, AI products like ChatGPT and Dall-E are empowering millions of people across industries to work more effectively. Generative AI is a deep tech that will filter out the noise that we encounter on the web. If you can ask the right questions contextually, generative CRM will be smart enough to know what to look for and how to present it to you.
Free up humans for high-value work
If you are a sales rep, imagine trying to acquire a potentially big new customer. You will have to spend hours sifting through data to strengthen your sales pitch, and by the time you do so, it may end up being archaic. You then comb your network and the prospect website and social media handles to find that perfect person to connect with, only to find that they moved on to another company recently. These repetitive, cyclical and routine tasks to acquire a new customer often waste precious time.
Generative AI can speed up these routine activities to make you far more productive. It will allow you to spend more time to do the real thing, which is building relationships with prospects and customers.
AI that you can trust
Security and privacy will be a critical aspect of generative CRM. Governed by guidelines that specifically address security and privacy concerns, generative AI will build on long standing principles for trusted AI.
While publicly available generative AI tools depend only on publicly available data and information, generative CRM will be grounded on private and secure customer data, while also drawing on publicly available data and information such as social media and corporate websites. The ability to fuse public and private data is what makes generative AI driven CRM a trusted, and impactful experience for customers.
Generative AI at Salesforce
AI is already an integral part of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, and its potential is limitless. Salesforce Einstein AI technology delivers over 200 billion predictions on a daily basis across multiple Salesforce’s business apps. This includes:
Sales, which utilises AI powered insights, to establish the best next steps so reps can close deals faster.
Service, which utilises AI to have bot-based natural conversations and provide the best fit answers, freeing up reps to work on more complex and important tasks.
Marketing, which uses AI to better understand customer behaviour and personalize marketing campaigns to boost their efficacy.
Commerce, which utilises AI to deliver personalized buying experiences and smarter ecommerce.
With generative AI, businesses can connect with their audiences in completely new, more engaging ways across every interaction.
Guidelines for Trusted Generative AI
Like they do with all their technology innovations, Salesforce is rooting ethical guidelines across all their products to assist businesses innovate rapidly and responsibly. With the tremendous potential and challenges emerging in generative AI, Salesforce is building further on their Trusted AI Principles with a new set of guidelines to push for responsible development and deployment of generative AI. Here are 5 such guidelines.
Accuracy: Use models to deliver verifiable results allowing customers to train models on their own data. Communicate when authenticity of the AI’s response cannot be established with certainty and enable users to ratify these responses. This can be achieved by citing sources, explaining why the AI gave those responses, underscoring areas to double-check such as stats, dates, and creating checks and balances that prevent certain tasks from being fully automated (like code review before deployment)
Safety: Effort should be made to mitigate any bias or harmful output by conducting robustness assessments. The privacy of any personal private information should also be protected by creating guardrails.
Honesty: When aggregating data to train and evaluate AI models, the source of data should be respected by ensuring their consent for use. Transparency in communication should be maintained by clearly stating that autonomously generated AI content has been delivered.
Empowerment: While in some cases, a fully automated AI driven process may be the best option especially for non-critical, publicly available data, there are cases where AI should augment a human role, especially where human judgment is necessary. One needs to establish the right balance to turbo charge human capabilities and make generative AI solutions accessible to all.
Sustainability: In our endeavour to establish more and more accuracy in our models, we should develop most appropriate-sized models wherever possible to reduce our carbon footprint.
Summary
If you are a Salesforce Consultant, this is an exciting time for you. Generative AI has the power to take CRM to the next level. By following the above guidelines, you can deliver never before seen value to your customers with the power of AI.
Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Development Partner delivering value to customers across the globe. To know more about how Generative CRM can work for you, contact us today.