If you’re one of the 4.5 billion people connected to the internet today, you use a search engine to find, purchase, or learn about pretty much anything that comes to mind. Consumer search engines provide a seamless way for us to make sense of our complex world. And consumers are used to a search experience that is fast, accurate, and constantly improving. But when those same people try to search within their CRM at work, the experience is painfully underwhelming: too many clicks to find what you’re looking for and an interface that confuses more than it helps. This shouldn’t be the case today. Search should be intelligent and help you quickly find critical information, be more productive, and resolve customer issues faster. That’s why I am so excited to announce the arrival of Einstein Search, which brings the incredible power of intelligent search to CRM by making it personal, natural, and actionable. 

The complexities of enterprise search

Enterprise search has lagged behind consumer search for a few key reasons. The first is a diverse user base with a diverse set of goals. When a consumer uses a search bar on an ecommerce site, the intention is universal: they are looking for something to buy. But in an enterprise setting, users have divergent goals that can range from salespeople trying to close deals to service agents solving customer cases and email marketers creating new campaigns.

The second challenge is siloed and dissimilar data. For instance, when customers buy CRM platforms like Salesforce to customize it, they are creating an environment that is completely unique to their business, from the fields they use to the custom objects they create. This means that a search model that might work for one customer will not work for another. At Salesforce, our customers’ data belongs to them, not us. That’s one of our core tenets and why so many companies trust us to run their businesses. This presents challenges for search because we don’t look at customer CRM data, meaning we can’t rely on traditional machine learning techniques. 

Announcing Einstein Search

Einstein Search addresses these issues. In building this feature, we had an opportunity to completely rethink search for CRM. It’s already one of the most widely used features in Salesforce with more than a billion searches a month. And with our analysis showing an up to 50% productivity lift, we had an opportunity to fundamentally accelerate customer success at scale for our customers.

Personalized results for every user

Salespeople and service agents rely on Salesforce as their single source of truth for customer information. This is why we made sure that Einstein Search had the ability to return personalized results for every user. Each search result is tailored to what matters at your company and how you work as an individual. For example, if a sales representative covers accounts in the Northeast in the Financial Services vertical, Einstein Search will learn that and show them more of what matters to them. Under the hood, Einstein Search leverages innovative data mining and machine learning techniques to personalize search results, all while keeping specific user information anonymized.

Relevant results from natural language queries

When we type the words “where can I find the nearest coffee shop” into Google, we expect the system to render a list of the coffee shops closest to our current location. Enterprise users expect the same seamless search experience when they use their applications. Einstein Search understands natural language, specifically as it applies to Salesforce. For example, if a sales rep types in “my open opportunities in New York,” Einstein Search interprets that query like a human would. It’s a faster, simpler way to retrieve whole sets of information (like every opportunity with your top account).

An actionable search bar for quicker time to value

Sales and service teams use Salesforce to get work done. Einstein Search increases productivity by not only displaying the most relevant information for each user, but also serves up customizable actions within the search results. For example, instead of searching for a contact, clicking into their record, and then manually attaching the contact to an opportunity, you can take these same actions just by using the enhanced Einstein Search bar. Using Einstein Search can result in an up to 50% reduction in clicks and page loads for the most frequently-used tasks, such as editing sales records.

Customers are finding value right away with Einstein Search

Einstein Search is already providing value for our customers, and is going live in June 2021. Brands including iHeartMedia and MightyHive are using Einstein Search to spend less time sifting through data and more time building customer relationships. “MightyHive is a global digital media consultancy with over 300 employees using Salesforce, and we are excited about the new Einstein Search capabilities,” said Laurent Farci, Director of Global CRM & Enterprise Solutions. “It tailors results to individual users, and significantly reduces the number of clicks to provide immediate access to needed information.”

This feature is available to orgs with an Unlimited, Enterprise, Professional, or Performance Edition license. (Essentials coming soon).

Interested customers can enable Einstein Search now by following the directions in this video.