Salesforce and IBM strengthened their partnership significantly by bringing Watson and Einstein together to improve customer experience. This partnership helps both parties by providing their customers with deeper insights, while prioritizing the use of AI in all things CRM related. More specifically, Salesforce and IBM are looking to automate the interpretation and processing of customer service calls and chats. There’s another unique part of this announcement. According to Salesforce’s press release:
“IBM will build new IBM Watson Quip Live Apps, bringing the power of Watson and Quip together. These interactive custom-built applications will be embedded directly into any Quip document to increase the effectiveness of sales teams across the lifecycle of an opportunity. With Quip's document creation and editing platform, customers are able to bring relevant content, for any project, into a centralized document, removing the need to toggle between multiple windows and apps to get work done.”So while Watson is beating you in chess, it will also help improve your Salesforce Quip experience by building interactive apps that enhance the entire sales process, potentially converting more opportunities and leads into customers. Apps and documents will all be accessible in one centralized platform, making it easier for users to use the cloud-based word processing app instead of going back and forth between Salesforce and Microsoft Office products or G-Suite.
Why Watson and Einstein Matter
AI helps push CRM software to new limits. Right now, businesses are mostly using CRM software to record contact data. Based on the data they receive, businesses can make their own call on how to improve customer experience; however, AI gives businesses a deeper understanding of each individual customer and offer more personalized solutions to their inquiries. Salesforce says:“Now, with AI driven predictive analytics, companies will be able to create personalized, customer-triggered interactions based on the latest call or messaging chat they had, to help build stronger connections with their customers.”If you go to a store because you bought a product and have a question for customer service, and no one’s behind the counter to help, or they’re all on break and won’t be back for at least a half hour, you’re not going to think highly of the store (I know this after working two years in retail). However, if they have a monitor that alerts employees when there are customers waiting, they can quickly respond and avoid a negative customer experience. If that same store is also able to quickly pull up customer history that can be useful to this interaction, it will show the customer that they’re paying attention to not just this interaction, but all previous interactions. AI works similarly, but at a much faster pace. People want fast responses to their problems, and businesses want to solve them, but if all they’re getting from their CRM software are numbers suggesting they could do better, nothing is being done to fix the actual issue. AI is the solution, and Salesforce and IBM are helping to set a new standard for customer experience.