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Powered by an extensive Salesforce Consulting Partner network, Salesforce provides access to expertise and solutions tailored for the automotive industry with their latest offering – Automotive Cloud. Automotive Cloud is a product created specifically for automotive manufacturers, supply chain partners, dealers, automotive finance companies, and their customers. Automotive Cloud empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer service experiences across every interaction with Driver 360, boosts top lines with better lead conversion and improved collaboration, and leverages industry best practices based automation and real-time analytics for greater productivity and RoI. The automotive industry is going through a huge transformation as it gears up to meet the demands of today’s digital first world. Salesforce research indicates that only 1% of automotive customers had a delightful car buying experience, and only 25% auto manufacturers and dealers believe their business has adapted well to online commerce. To create new revenue channels and fix the fragmented customer experience, the automotive industry must recognize new opportunities with new selling and service models, connected and intelligent vehicles, subscriptions models, partnerships, and the heaps of data these new offerings generate.  With the rise in direct to consumer models and the surge in the adoption of electric vehicles, the automotive industry is in the midst of a new digital imperative. Automakers today recognize that with disruption comes opportunity, and businesses embracing the digital-first future with a technology platform like Automotive Cloud can have a competitive edge going into the future. According to Salesforce, over 90% of automotive industry leaders recognize that first-party data can help significantly improve the customer experience across every interaction – like vehicle browsing, purchasing, financing, or service. Automotive Cloud, powered by Driver 360, and built on automated, intelligent and real-time technology, delivers a unified view of the customer and vehicle lifecycle for auto manufacturers, supply chain partners, dealers, and finance agencies. Just like Education 360 for learning and Patient 360 for healthcare, Driver 360 is built on the powerful Customer 360 platform and delivers a single source of truth for the entire automotive industry. Whether consumers are surfing for a new car, completing a purchase, looking for vehicle financing, or want to get their vehicle serviced, Automotive Cloud is poised to drive the automotive industry through this phase of unprecedented transformation by enabling real-time intelligent personalization across the entire journey of the vehicle. With Automotive Cloud, marketers can configure ranking parameters to qualify leads to share the leads most likely to convert with the customer’s local dealer. Dealer managers can track the performance of their inventory to discover how dealers are performing to improve how they manage their inventory and vehicle allocation. Service teams can configure alerts to notify them when a service is due. And IT teams can build custom workflows with just a few clicks to automatically alert customers in case of a vehicle recall of a particular model. Driver 360 empowers you to deliver best-in-class customer experiences Driver 360 comes pre-built with industry specific best practices based on out-of-the-box solutions built on verified data models for the auto industry to fast track time to value. With Driver Console, service teams can get a comprehensive view of all customer interactions and alerts across every touchpoint throughout the customer and vehicle journey, including car browsing, purchasing to vehicle servicing. With the Household Management feature, automotive businesses can aggregate their data to build a 360 degree picture of a household’s vehicle ownership and past interactions, which the dealers and other partners can use to offer personalize support and offers. With Vehicle Console, staff across automakers, dealers and finance agencies can get easy access to holistic vehicle information like odometer readings, current market value of the vehicle and real-time service and repair information.  Automotive Data Foundation, which has been built on industry standards, is the cornerstone of Automotive Cloud. It creates a trusted data foundation that allows for interoperability, compliances, data protection and data sharing. Drive revenue through better lead conversion and communication Today’s customers prefer digital first engagement. Which means automotive businesses, dealers and partners need to collaborate seamlessly to drive sales, manage inventory, and deliver enhanced customer experiences.  Automotive Lead Management encourages collaboration right across the value chain that includes automotive manufacturers and dealers. It enriches leads by providing comprehensive  customer and vehicle history, enabling users to direct the high priority leads directly to the customer’s preferred dealer coupled with comprehensive information about their preferences, needs, and interaction history. Dealership performance can be easily analysed by region and lead pipelines can be monitored better with Dealer Performance Management. This enables auto businesses to focus their efforts and facilitate better coordination across sales agreements, customer visits, partner affiliations, forecasts, incentives, and much more. Powerful AI and analytics for increased productivity and cost savings with industry-specific automation, With rising prices of raw material and parts, supply chain limitations, and huge investments in EVs, automotive businesses need smart automation, AI, intelligent analytics based on seamlessly connected data to lower costs, identify new streams of revenue and empower users to make better informed decisions. Flow for Automotive Cloud allows users to build and deploy intelligent workflow automation with just a few clicks. Flow’s integration and configuration capability makes it easy to create and deploy branded automation experiences like order status updates or delay notifications to enable users to accomplish more tasks with lesser resources, improve efficiency, and deliver enhanced customer experiences at scale. With Analytics for Automotive Cloud, automakers can get deep insights to track and improve business performance. Analytics comes with purpose-built dashboards and views that give business users a detailed snapshot of business performance, customer and vehicle lifecycle, and trends, to yield faster and better business outcomes. With Salesforce Genie, automotive businesses can unify complete customer and vehicle data across multiple channels across all interactions by aggregating vehicle, service and interaction data into a unified, real-time, customer profile. With Automotive Cloud you can deliver unified purchase and service experiences. It empowers you to automate processes, get intelligent insights. Now you can transform customer insights into real time, rich, seamless experiences. Get an enriched view of your customers, households, vehicles, and assets to enable real-time, purposeful engagements. Automate business processes easily with just a few clicks. Simplify integrations across automakers, partners and collaborators and deliver branded experiences with just a few clicks with Flow for Automotive Cloud. Get intelligent insights and make better informed decisions. Customer facing teams can use the power of AI to engage smartly with customers across every touchpoint. Drive real-time, engaging experiences. Drive sales and service. Delight customers throughout the entire sales and service journey with a solution purpose built for the automotive industry. Here’s what you get with Automotive Cloud to power customer engagement. Driver Console Get a 360-degree view of all customer interactions and easily configure custom alerts for your teams. Vehicle Console Access important information such as vehicle details, warranties, or service reports. Household Management View complete history of a household’s owners and vehicles to deliver personalised support and offers. Automotive Lead Management Forward high-priority leads directly to the customer’s preferred dealer. Partner Performance Management Easily track performance of partners and seamlessly collaborate on site visits, incentives, and more. Automotive Data Foundation Ensure data protection, compliances, and data sharing. As a  Salesforce Consultant, Girikon recognizes that Automotive Cloud comes with limitless possibilities to enable automotive companies make their business future proof. To know more about how you can leverage AI, Automation and Analytics to significantly improve decision making, drive efficiency and boost revenues for your automotive business, contact one of our experts today.

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.

In today’s pandemic context, businesses around the world have embraced digital transformation to re-imagine their internal processes. In partnership with global Salesforce Consultants, the Customer 360 platform has helped organizations witness exponential growth in lead conversion and customer satisfaction scores. And with digital transformation, there has been growing need to make the platform available to field services. And that led to the birth of Salesforce Field Service Lightning. Salesforce Field Service is a solution that extends the power and flexibility of the Salesforce platform to field service operations. Multiple teams across geographies can be easily connected to everyday field service tasks that require site visits in real time. What Is Salesforce Field Service Lightning? Salesforce Field Service Lightning is Salesforce’s new offering as part of its Customer-360 platform to augment the customer experience through field services. One of the hallmarks of Salesforce CRM is the 360-degree insight on customers. With Field Service Lightning, customer information percolates downstream to the field service agents. Along with that, Salesforce also provides a Field Service learning map, a handy resource to guide you on your path to Field Service success. Let’s dive deeper into the key functions of Salesforce Field Service Lightning to understand why it’s useful for businesses. Task Assignment This is perhaps the most attractive feature of Salesforce Field Service Lightning. With this function, you can quickly create tasks for your field service agents and track the tasks assigned in real time. Standard activities such as appointments, maintenance tasks and other field activities can be easily managed by the field agents and technicians. And because of the fully integrated capability of the Salesforce platform, Field Service Lightning comes integrated with contacts, accounts, cases, and other items. You can get access to knowledge articles and real time tracking of SLA compliance with relevant milestone tracking or visit resolution. Service and Resource Allocation Field Service also allows you to automatically customise and assign tasks as per company guidelines. And not just that,  it also allows you to book appointments easily based on customer data and tailor the relevant tool for a particular task based on  capacity, location, and business rules. Customers can also auto-book an appointment conveniently. Real Time Inventory  Using the Field Service mobile app, you can view the assets installed at client locations using the barcode scan function. You can scan team barcodes and update the inventory available with a particular truck. This allows the field technician to easily manage the tools inventory and materials that is being transported to the customer. The required field service tasks can be associated with both the inventory required for the task as well as the skills required to complete them. You can configure multiple storage locations for materials and tools which could be fixed locations such as warehouses as well as mobile inventory such as trucks or backpacks. Dispatcher Console You can easily assign tasks and link it to the right agent based on multiple criteria such as work location, required knowledge to accomplish the task, agent availability, and much more. The dispatcher can get a complete view of all scheduled appointments, their stratus updates, with alerts for issues that require urgent intervention. The field service map shows you the status of the service task in real time, showing the current location of the both the technician as well as the client. With this feature, tracking and management of field technicians becomes more efficient. Field Service App Using the Field Service Mobile app, the field technicians can view the list of pending tasks for the day in real time. Tasks can be viewed in 2 ways: a sequential list for the day ahead or a map that shows the route to follow. Technicians can also fill in the necessary information required to complete the task. The app also provides relevant guidance to the technician to ensure that the necessary steps are followed to confirm the appointment, making their job easier. Field Service Lightning comes integrated with Chatter. This allows field technicians to share updates with other technicians or the dispatcher in real time. Customers can sign on the app itself and technicians can create service reports by having a digital document about the job. The app also works seamlessly in offline mode, which may be necessary in remote areas.  In offline mode, all Field Service functions are available in the app. This allows technicians to complete tasks in areas where there is limited or no mobile service. Technicians no longer have to be limited by circumstances and can deliver great customer service everywhere. Data Analysis Salesforce has set a gold standard when it comes to data analysis and Field Service Lightning is no different. In Field Service, you can easily perform data analysis on the go with just a few taps. You can create comprehensive custom views of technicians, supervisors, and third party contractors. Salesforce Field Service Lightning allows you to easily integrate all data from multiple systems making service and its supervision possible. 4 Advantages of Salesforce Field Service Lightning Salesforce Field Service Lightning integrates seamlessly with tools of the Salesforce ecosystem such as Service Cloud to deliver greater efficiency and productivity. Shift Management Organizing field service teams in shifts and complex trip management is a thing of the past. Salesforce Field Service Lightning is built on an object model that allows for improved and easy management of these processes. Supervisors and managers can easily manage resources and shifts and relieve administrators of unnecessary heavy lifting of mundane tasks. Dependencies Linking tasks can now be done easily with Field Service Lightning. More often than not, tasks have dependences and its critical to correlate them to maintain service levels. This is particularly helpful in scenarios where a particular work order has multiple tasks that must be completed. Service Groups This allows field service agents to work as a collaborative team for easier planning and execution of field service tasks. This brings in fluidity to the entire service operations. More often than not, field service teams work under the assumption that everyone has similar skills, which limits a work order to be able to allocate resources using a combination of skills. For instance, if you need a carpenter and a plumber, they should be assigned to different service appointments with the same start dependencies amongst them. This feature comes in handy for certain scenarios such as professional services or complex engineering. Salesforce is committed to continue its technology innovation to bring value to its customers, their employees and partners across industries. Field Service offers a significant improvement for your business, covering all your task and logistic management needs and ensures that your field service agents can spend most of their time on what they do best and not in mundane,  repetitive tasks. At Girikon, a Gold Salesforce Partner, we offer consulting, implementation, and training across the entire spectrum of Salesforce products. To know more about how Salesforce Field Service Lightning can significantly improve the efficiency of your field service operations, contact us today.

Global Digital Skills Index from Salesforce research conducted in 2022 indicates a growing digital skills crisis. The in-depth research about digital skills is based on a survey with 23,000+ respondents (existing and prospective workers) across 19 countries. It includes areas such as their impact on the future of work, their job readiness concerns, and the importance of continuous up-skilling.

Customers are very demanding today, primarily because of the options available to them. When they reach out to a brand for support, they expect minimal wait times and fast resolution, regardless of the channel they use. Agents, however, have limited bandwidth and can only handle a limited number of cases at a time. So how does one scale customer support? Enter chatbots. But what exactly is a chatbot? That’s a significant question considering the fact that this technology is increasingly becoming a bigger part of our daily lives.  In fact, Gartner research predicts that soon the average person will spend more time interacting with chatbots than with their spouse. With round-the-clock digital support becoming a critical value proposition for brands, more and more businesses are using chatbots to engage with customers to deliver the SLA expected of them. At a technical level, a chatbot (derived from “chat robot”) is a piece of code (program) that simulates human interaction through text or voice communication. Today, chatbots can be customised and used in multiple ways such as: Chatbots that interact through smart speakers Chatbots deployed on smart home devices Chatbots that can be deployed on popular messaging platforms and web In addition to having a conversation with a service agent, customers can now interact with an intelligent software that helps them to find answers fast. Whether through text or voice, chatbots can communicate with customers and respond to requests faster. To put it simply, Chatbots are Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered digital assistants that answer common customer questions. They help customers quickly resolve simple and routine issues freeing up agent time to work on more complex issues that require human interactions. How does one create customer service chatbots Customer service chatbots resolve simple, repetitive tasks that don’t require interacting with a human customer service agent. For instance, if a customer wants to know how to reset a password or the estimated delivery time for a product they ordered, a customer service chatbot quickly accesses the relevant information and answers the question without keeping the customer waiting at the other end. And while this is happening, your service agents can focus on resolving more complex customer issues and build stronger customer relationships. If you are looking to invest in chatbot technology, your first goal is to establish the most common customer requests to identify what to automate. We suggest the following six tips that you should keep in mind when designing your first AI-powered chatbot: 1. Personalise every greeting Customer service agents are trained to be warm, greet customers by name, and recognise their service privilege status. A chatbot can do the same thing in the background, powered by AI. Chatbots can be programmed to retrieve their name to ensure chatbots greet them like a human agent would. 2. Move from static to conversational Customers hate the idea of filling out an online form and then having to wait for 12 -24 hours for a response. An AI powered service chatbot can dynamically ask a series of relevant questions based on customer inputs and make the interaction more engaging. It also helps resolve the customer issues faster. And in the case where agent intervention is necessary, they will already have all the relevant information logged by the chatbot available in their panel. 3. Create interactive FAQs Traditionally, customers are prompted to visit the FAQ section of a website or app to resolve issues in a self-service mode. Chatbots turn this process around its head. They bring the FAQ answers to customers. You can stack your common FAQs and their answers into your AI interface, including all related questions and their answers.  And with natural language processing (NLP) capability built into the AI engine, chatbots recognise everyday use language and respond to customer queries. Now your customers can find what they are looking for faster than before. 4. Deploy chatbots to additional channels Businesses today deploy customer service across multiple digital channels such as web, messaging, and social allowing customers to connect with your brand in the way they want.  Salesforce research indicates that an average customer today uses nine different channels to interact with brands. This variety of options creates multiple opportunities to deliver 360-degree customer service to meet their ever-changing behaviour. You can dive deeper into your analytics to identify the channel that gets the maximum traffic for your brand, and then identify the top customer service requests on that channel. Automate your chatbot to respond to these requests and save time for your agents. 5. Engage customers with formatted text and content Basic text is all right for answering simple questions, but professionally formatted text using a range of font styles, sizes and colors enhances the customer experience. You can even insert images and interactive menus into the chat. And because it is powered by AI, your chatbot can surface a product menu, a list of articles, or customer support options, based on wat the customer asked, all within the chat. 6. Embed process automation in chatbots With AI, you can empower customers to self-serve themselves by assisting them with guided, step-by-step instruction right within the chat console. Work with your teams to identify tasks that are easy for customers to complete on their own. Therese are typically tasks that can be easily automated without needing any human intervention like renewing an insurance policy. Once your team has identified these simple and common use tasks, you can program your chatbot to guide customers throughout the service journey. And for more complex issues, when the chatbot has to hand over the conversation to an agent, the agent is already empowered with all relevant information about the case so they can resolve it quickly. Scale customer service with chatbots Your customers will recognize the value your customer service chatbots bring to them with quick, efficient resolutions to their requests and concerns. And you agents will have more tie to focus on complex customer service requests instead of answering FAQs. With AI powered chatbots, you can easily scale support to handle any case overload as and when they come your way. AI-powered chatbot technology holds the promise to reinvent the customer experience. And high-performing service teams are leading the AI powered chatbot revolution to augment their existing human customer support teams. In today’s digital first context, where speed of service is king, chatbots are helping companies stay ahead of the curve. As a Gold Salesforce Consultant, Girikon can help you deploy AI powered chatbot based customer service at scale. Contact one of our experts to learn more.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is growing in stature in the marketing realm.  Marketers today rank AI as their #1 priority for investment, according to a recent State of Marketing Report published by Salesforce. The adoption of AI is staggering with about 84% of marketers reporting that they use AI in their customer acquisition and retention engines, that’s almost 300% growth in 2 years. What exactly are marketers doing with AI? The usage of AI is crossing all barriers, from improved segmentation and personalisation, deeper insight, forecasting and process automation. With the growth in advertising technology, riding on big-data driven AI, advertising companies reimagined the process of delivering digital ads. According to eMarketer,  online ad sales rose from $60 billion in 2019 to an estimated $97 billion in 2022. What do sales teams feel about the impact of AI on what they do? They would tell you-cautiously optimistic. According to latest research from Salesforce, 86% of sales reps view AI as having a positive impact on their future roles. However, 68% of the same reps had concerns as well. And as you would imagine, mostly concerning the very relevance of their existing jobs. 31% percent said technology might eventually negatively impact the art of selling, as AI driven optimisation of sales interactions replaces human-to-human relationships. Five reasons to be happy about AI in advertising While it is only natural to fear the unknown, there is reason to believe that AI will make the existing jobs of sales reps better. AI augments the sales process and leaves people to do what they do best which is to be human. AI has the potential to level the playing field for both advertisers and publishers. It empowers sales teams, who don’t have the budgets that large corporations or media companies may have, with the tools they would like. AI-driven ad technology can help sales teams boost both the effectiveness of their messaging and their efficiency. 1. Improved data unity and synchronization With the impending censure of third-party cookies in Apple and Chrome’s privacy policies, marketing professionals are increasingly seeking first-party data to power their marketing initiatives. Merkle’s 2021 Customer Engagement Report stated that first-party data was a strategic priority for a staggering 88% of the marketers. For publishers, first-party data is vital to building advertiser centric audiences; and for advertisers, first-party data is increasingly vital for targeted advertising. And that’s where the challenge is. First-party data is not only complex, more often than not, it is fragmented and ill organised. According to Salesforce research, 64% of customers start their purchase process on one device and finish on another. With the proliferation of smartphones and devices, marketers have to deal with an average of 12 primary sources of customer data, an increase of 20% from 2020. And as one would expect, most of the data residing in these sources has inconsistent identity information, expired or outdated information, and unconventional taxonomy. AI can be a great asset to a common Customer Data Platform to significantly improve identity matching. Algorithms can execute “fuzzy logic” on IDs and resolve or isolate discrepancies. AI can also ensure data consistency by mapping data from siloed systems to a common data model. 2. Better audience segmentation and discovery Customers today prefer digital first, and they want relevant experiences. They want the messaging to be useful and timely in their digital lives. Delivering a personalised experience mandates the need for organised data as well as smart algorithms to discover customer segments and reveal their needs that may be impossible to do manually in real-time. AI stands out at intelligent segmentation, discovering groups of customers and prospects with common attributes at a scale that is impossible for a human analyst to achieve. AI algos can sift through billions of records of customer data to identify meaningful patterns and segment audiences intelligently for more effective and targeted marketing programs. 3. Natural language shakes hands with technology Natural-language processing (NLP) and image recognition are 2 areas which are extremely promising when it comes to AI. Chatbots have taken customer service to the next level with conversational customer service. Voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa are already changing the user experience whether we want to book a ticket or are in the mood to have Chinese. As voice recognition technology approaches 95%+ accuracy, voice navigation will become an intrinsic part of customer engagement. Voice navigation is already built into call centre systems and used in analytics as well to some extent. However, AI based marketing technology is at the cusp of something never seen before. Imagine an ad sales rep never having to use a keypad again to make the right selection. With less and less human clicks efficiency will improve significantly, and so will the efficacy of the whole process. And this will lead to ad reps spending less time in searching and updating and have more time to do what they do best – selling. 4. Back-end processes efficiency We’ve already talked about how AI can help unify and harmonize data. It can also help sales teams become more efficient by prioritising their efforts, and allowing them to focus their time on key tasks while automating the mundane ones. Lead Scoring was one of the first areas to benefit from AI technology. While there was resistance from sales teams initially in adopting the technology, and rightly so, with the uncertainty of the what the unknown will do to their current jobs. Questions such as – How can a software qualify a good lead better than me, were commonplace. But with technology integration into existing systems, many sales reps now use algorithms regularly to augment their priority their prospects. The same is true for determining next best actions based on interaction history and scheduling meetings. AI can help ad sales teams match available inventory with “most likely to close” sales opportunities thereby significantly trimming the time spent on low-probability leads. 5. Improved measurement and optimisation In the post pandemic period, digital ad spend has seen a meteoric rise. Brands now spend more than half of their advertising budgets on digital platforms. AI can help aggregate and analyse all that data seamlessly to help advertisers establish the impact of campaigns viz a viz desired outcomes, such as sales. Simply put, AI can help ad sales teams separate the noise and identify what works. To measure the efficacy of multi-channel campaigns, one needs to harvest information from dozens of sources. And that’s not all. They also need to apply complex models to determine which aspects of the campaign, channels, devices, and tactics made an impact. AI-driven tools can help ad sales teams with automated recommendations to optimize campaigns based on the historical performance of ads. AI excels at automating tedious tasks, and is also fantastic at sifting through huge amounts of data at unimaginable speed. Something humans can’t do. By allowing AI technology to do what it does best, we make the entire process of ad sales less artificial and more intelligent. Girikon is a Gold Salesforce Consultant delivering value to customers across the globe for over a decade. Contact one of our experts to know how AI can help unlock the true value of your advertising sales.

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.