Salesforce has announced new features for Service Cloud that provide agents and supervisors with AI-powered insights, content generation, and automation capabilities to help increase customer satisfaction, grow loyalty, and help transform contact centers into revenue generators. Powered by Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform, service leaders can now use Data Cloud and Einstein to identify recurring issues, recommend next steps based on customer feedback, and monitor service conversations to suggest ways agents can resolve cases faster.

Why it matters: Good customer service can drive billions in new revenue*, yet people often have disconnected experiences when dealing with customer service agents. Sixty percent of people surveyed in Salesforce’s State of Service report say it feels like they’re communicating with separate departments during a service call, and 66% often have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives. 

What’s Coming: New AI and data innovations in Service Cloud include: 

The Salesforce perspective: “Customers are right to expect smarter, faster experiences in this AI era. Salesforce’s new innovations empower contact centers with real-time data and trusted AI to resolve cases and provide proactive, personalized service when and how customers want it — and sometimes even before they ask for it.” – Ryan Nichols, Chief Product Officer, Service Cloud 

Salesforce’s new innovations empower contact centers with real-time data and trusted AI to resolve cases and provide proactive, personalized service when and how customers want it — and sometimes even before they ask for it.

Ryan Nichols, Chief Product Officer, Service Cloud

Reaction to the news: “At Sonos, we intend to use the new innovations at Salesforce to improve the agent and customer experience in the future by utilizing AI to handle mundane tasks, allowing our agents to focus on building customer loyalty and driving revenue.”Dharam Rai, Vice President, Customer Experience, Sonos

Partner ecosystem extends the power of the intelligent contact center: Salesforce has an extensive partner ecosystem that provides capabilities for service organizations of all sizes and in any industry. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will bring Amazon Connect Chat, Amazon Connect forecasting, capacity planning, and agent scheduling to Service Cloud. This together with generative AI will power unified customer experiences, more productive agents, and more informed supervisors. Genesys will help orchestrate personalized conversations across all channels while providing service leaders with workforce performance insights to inform organizational decisions.

Availability:

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Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

A new report from Salesforce and the Retail AI Council finds that global retailers are eager to adopt generative AI to personalize and improve in-store and online shopping experiences. However, nearly half of the 1,300 retailers surveyed are struggling to make their data accessible, and just 42% are connecting their various data silos, which can lead to ineffective or inaccurate artificial intelligence (AI) outputs.

Why it matters: Generative AI is expected to have a $9.2 trillion impact on the retail sector by 2029 as retailers see the benefit of implementing this technology to streamline operations, increase productivity, and deliver more personalized experiences for shoppers and associates. However, just 13% of customers completely trust companies to use AI ethically, and 63% are concerned about bias in AI outputs.

The AI revolution is about data, trust, and customer experience. Looking at AI in isolation, without understanding these elements as a package, will hurt a retailer’s ability to build loyalty and improve customer relationships.

Rob Garf, GM of Retail and Consumer Goods

Salesforce perspective: “The AI revolution is about data, trust, and customer experience. Looking at AI in isolation, without understanding these elements as a package, will hurt a retailer’s ability to build loyalty and improve customer relationships. The research we’re sharing today will help retailers better understand the need for a unified data strategy and how generative AI can be used to enhance the experience for both shoppers and associates.” – Rob Garf, GM of Retail and Consumer Goods

By the numbers:

Retailers are eyeing generative AI for personalization and customer service use cases

The retail industry isn’t shying away from AI adoption. 

Retailers struggle with data strategies to support effective generative AI

Retailers understand the importance of data, according to the survey, but many are still working through how to unify all of their data and build a single view of their customers to unlock more effective generative AI outputs.

Trust, ethics increasingly critical to generative AI adoption

Retailers are aware of the security and trust risks surrounding generative AI. Fortunately, they’re ready to address them and are already taking steps to do so.

The Retail AI Council perspective: “In today’s retail landscape, AI isn’t just changing the game — it’s reshaping the entire playbook. It isn’t only a backstage assistant to merchants, it’s also the emerging co-star in the customer’s shopping journey. AI is now the imperative for anticipating needs, tailoring experiences, and transforming shopping from a transactional chore into a personalized and evolving adventure.” – Jenna Posner, CDO of Solo Brands and Vice Chair of the Retail AI Council

More information: 

Research methodology

The Retail AI Council and Salesforce surveyed 1,390 decision makers in the retail industry to understand generative AI strategies.

Data in this report are from a double-anonymous survey conducted in December 2023. The surveys generated 1,390 responses from a range of retail decision makers across Canada, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Australia. 

Due to rounding, not all percentage totals in this report equal 100%.


About the Retail AI Council: The Retail AI Council is a retailer-led organization dedicated to helping retailers embrace the transformative potential of AI. Our mission is to guide and empower retailers in navigating the disruptive landscape of AI technology, enabling them to stay ahead of the curve and unlock new opportunities for growth.

Today, Salesforce announced it has named Alexandra (Ally) Legend Siegel as Chief Equality Officer. Ally is a Salesforce boomerang, having previously spent more than seven years at Salesforce building out its equality initiatives. In this role, Ally will lead the company’s global equality strategy with a focus on talent practices and employee experience.

Ally is a seasoned equality leader with nearly a decade of experience leading diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. She was a founding member of Salesforce’s Office of Equality and established the company’s first equality trainings, was instrumental in instituting company-wide inclusive hiring and talent practices, launched inclusive career programs, and created Salesforce’s inclusive marketing principles. She also led the company’s Equality Group strategy, drawing from her experience as a past global president of BOLDforce.

“Equality is a core value, and part of who we are as a company. When we build a workplace that reflects the world around us, we accelerate innovation and better serve our customers and millions of Trailblazers around the world,” said Nathalie Scardino, President and Chief People Officer, Salesforce. “Ally is an experienced and admired equality leader and we’re thrilled to welcome her back to Salesforce to lead this work.”

“This is truly a full circle moment and, in many ways, feels like coming home. Having been involved in Salesforce’s equality journey from the beginning, I’m deeply honored to return to help lead us into the next chapter,” said Ally Siegel, Chief Equality Officer, Salesforce. “We’re in a pivotal moment in technology, as AI enters every facet of our lives, and having diverse perspectives at the table is imperative to shaping our future. Together with Salesforce’s employees, customers, and partners, we can continue to pave the way for a more equal world.”

Read more about Salesforce’s commitment to equality

Ketan Karkhanis’ face still lights up when he talks about sales.

An engineer by trade and a sales enthusiast by choice, Karkhanis, Salesforce’s EVP & General Manager of Sales Cloud, is just as fired up about his team’s product innovations as he is about the art of selling. 

Here, as Salesforce rounds the corner on 25 years in business, Karkhanis reflects on the evolution of the industry. He looks back at when Salesforce pioneered the cloud-based CRM model to help salespeople from businesses of all sizes track and manage leads — and at the newly announced AI capabilities of Einstein Copilot for Sales, which are included in the Einstein 1 Sales Edition, and available in the Enterprise Edition.

Q. Salesforce recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. How has sales evolved since those early days?

The sales landscape has undergone a complete transformation over the past three decades, and it’s been characterized by three distinct waves.

The first wave was the age of the Rolodex, spreadsheets, and client server-based apps. Selling was disconnected, clunky, and painful.

Then, in 1999, Salesforce introduced the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. This innovation, moving applications and customer data to the cloud, ushered in the second wave of sales — the digital acceleration wave. At the core of this transformative wave was bringing together data from across the business’s entire business, from sales and service to marketing and commerce, to create an accessible and holistic view of customers. Since that time, customers worldwide have embraced the cloud and Sales Cloud has become the market leader, generating more than $7.5 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2024.

Now, we are on the cusp of Wave 3: The artificial intelligence (AI) Imperative, where AI and data have become indispensable tools for boosting productivity, deepening customer relationships, and achieving better margins.

Ketan Karkhanis, Salesforce’s EVP & General Manager of Sales

Now, we are on the cusp of Wave 3: The artificial intelligence (AI) Imperative, where AI and data have become indispensable tools for boosting productivity, deepening customer relationships, and achieving better margins.

This is one of the reasons we developed Einstein 1 Sales Edition, which bundles the best data and AI capabilities Salesforce has to offer in one streamlined package. This edition includes Einstein Copilot for Sales — a customizable, conversational, generative AI assistant that utilizes an organization’s unique data and metadata to produce powerful customer insights and recommendations directly within Sales Cloud to help sellers close more deals, faster.

Q. How has Salesforce approached the sales industry differently than other software companies?

Salesforce pioneered the concept of a single source of truth, connecting not just sales but service, marketing, and commerce in a single, cohesive platform to get a complete view of every customer. That was a game changer for sales teams. It elevated sales from a transaction-oriented exercise centered around a single sale to a relationship-centered exercise that’s the foundation of the Salesforce Customer 360 experience.

We’re bringing all the signals from across the business together in Salesforce Data Cloud to create a holistic approach to customer engagement, allowing businesses to power AI, automation, and analytics and deliver seamless experiences across all touchpoints.

And Einstein Copilot can put all that data to use, helping sellers answer questions, summarize and create content, interpret complex conversations, and dynamically automate tasks for users — all from a consistent conversational UI across Salesforce’s #1 AI CRM applications. 

And Einstein Copilot can put all that data to use, helping sellers answer questions, summarize and create content, interpret complex conversations, and dynamically automate tasks for users — all from a consistent conversational UI across Salesforce’s #1 AI CRM applications. 

Ketan Karkhanis, Salesforce’s EVP & General Manager of Sales

Sellers can use the AI assistant to better understand their customers and boost sales. For example, using natural language prompts, they can ask Einstein Copilot to recommend a new product tier for a customer. And since it’s grounded in the seller’s unique data, it understands which products the customer currently has, their upgrade options, and how to help move them into a new high-value marketing segment.

In addition, Salesforce has been at the forefront of empowering sales reps with mobile accessibility for sales operations. With mobile applications and tools, Salesforce enables reps to access critical information and collaborate with colleagues anytime, anywhere, driving enhanced productivity and responsiveness. 

Q.  How does Sales Cloud, and all of Salesforce’s apps, bring data together to feed AI, automation, and analytics experiences?

Many of our best innovations began with listening to our customers. And so often what we hear is that they need trusted data to help them sell more effectively. That feedback led to innovations like Salesforce Data Cloud

Data Cloud connects, federates, and harmonizes any data type from any product and system, and connects it back to Salesforce applications like Sales Cloud to deliver a comprehensive, 360-degree view of customers and power CRM, AI, automation, and analytics across any business process. 

For example, by using Data Cloud to connect and harmonize customer data from previously siloed departments such as marketing and service, sales teams have the most up-to-date information on website engagement, marketing, and service all in one place to drive a more intelligent decision-making process for the sales cycle. Imagine getting a holistic picture of a prospect — knowing they visited your website, checked the pricing page, attended a conference, have an open support case, or that they haven’t responded to the latest campaign marketing email — and then being able to tailor your approach accordingly. 

And, with Data Cloud integrated into Sales Cloud, sellers can be assured that AI outputs like an Einstein-generated sales email are grounded in accurate, personalized data about the customer, while maintaining privacy and data governance.

Thousands of customers are also using the AI capabilities in Sales Cloud to be more efficient and in turn, drive more business. Sellers spend countless hours on admin tasks, but with Einstein by their side, automatically taking notes, drafting activity summaries, and updating their CRM, they’re free to focus more on building customer relationships. And sales professionals are hungry for help — 98% of sales leaders say the use of sales reps’ time will be improved by AI, according to Salesforce research

Q. Could you explain the concept of Salesblazers?

Salesblazer isn’t about Salesforce — it’s about sellers.

In an early 2023 product review with Marc Benioff, he asked me, “What are we doing to help sellers become even more successful”? I immediately rattled off all the cool tech we had coming down the pipeline. We realized, however, that the answer wasn’t just tech and product.

We started brainstorming and came to the realization that there wasn’t a trusted source of knowledge for salespeople. There were a few pockets of information, but most of the time, sellers were just Googling their way through life to get smarter about selling — whether it was methodologies to sell, how to organize for success, how to increase sales effectiveness, or how to build customer relationships and advance deals.

That’s when Marc came up with the idea of Salesblazer. He envisioned a digital hub where every sales professional — from business development representatives just starting out to chief revenue officers of Fortune 100 companies — would have a trusted source for best practices and insights to help them learn and grow.

Ketan Karkhanis, Salesforce’s EVP & General Manager of Sales

That’s when Marc came up with the idea of Salesblazer. He envisioned a digital hub where every sales professional — from business development representatives just starting out to chief revenue officers of Fortune 100 companies — would have a trusted source for best practices and insights to help them learn and grow.

We launched Salesblazer later that year, and it quickly became the world’s largest community of sales professionals.

Q. Which Sales Cloud customer success story stands out to you the most? 

There have been so many success stories over the years. One recent story that stands out is from The Commercial Real Estate Exchange, Inc., known as CREXi

Einstein 1 Sales produces intelligence and insights based on historical data like contact, account, and business history so the team can identify patterns and get recommended next steps. The company is also democratizing this data across the team so everyone on the sales team can learn from one another and help close more deals. 

Einstein 1 Sales is helping CREXi’s inside sales team move faster. Leaning into generative AI technology has cut down on writer’s block and time spent drafting outreach emails, so sales reps can focus on the conversation the customer wants to have.

In fact, CREXI’s sales teams now save five hours per day on administrative tasks by using generative AI in Sales Cloud, letting reps focus their valuable time and attention on relationship-building and revenue-generating conversations with customers.

Ketan Karkhanis, Salesforce’s EVP & General Manager of Sales

In fact, CREXI’s sales teams now save five hours per day on administrative tasks by using generative AI in Sales Cloud, letting reps focus their valuable time and attention on relationship-building and revenue-generating conversations with customers.

Today, the confluence of two trends — a generational shift in the buyer persona and advancements in data and AI — is leading B2B sales away from the intuition-based approach of the past to the data-driven strategy of the future.

Buyer behaviors are changing. They’re no longer engaging with companies on a single channel but across multiple channels, whether it’s on their websites and social media channels, in-store, or over email.

Over the next few years, we’ll see buyer engagement driven by conversational AI assistants like Einstein Copilot, which will help organizations move prospects from the awareness stage to making a purchase 10 times faster, curating personalized buying experiences at scale. These digital sales environments will offer more immersive experiences to raise buyer confidence and accelerate the buying journey. A business’s website will become its top sales rep.

All of these customer interactions — from visiting a website to buying a product — create a trail of digital breadcrumbs. Products like Data Cloud will help sales teams follow that trail to provide better service.

All of these customer interactions — from visiting a website to buying a product — create a trail of digital breadcrumbs. Products like Data Cloud will help sales teams follow that trail to provide better service.

Ketan Karkhanis, Salesforce’s EVP & General Manager of Sales

In the next stage of the AI revolution, we’ll see the emergence of digital agents — AI assistants that can go beyond recommendations and insights to autonomously taking actions like helping a business development rep schedule meetings with prospects to amplify seller productivity or automatically creating sales leads based on analyzing public data.

Finally, we’re going to see a massive surge in upskilling entire sales organizations — to ensure they can tap into the power of AI technology for more productivity and revenue growth. Salesforce is poised to support this trend through our AI innovations, investing in sales team skill development, and fostering community collaboration through initiatives like Salesblazers. We’ve also added new AI courses to Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform, to help over 6 million users get started with tools like Einstein Copilot and Prompt Builder, build skills, and explore new career paths.

Dive deeper:

With Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform, field service teams can better prepare before an onsite visit, execute efficiently on the day of service, and continue to engage with customers following service to build relationships, optimize operations, and drive growth with new generative AI capabilities


Today, Salesforce announced the Einstein 1 Field Service Edition, a new, streamlined package for field service organizations that helps deliver increased operational efficiency and technician productivity. Now, with access to real-time data and AI in the field, every technician can get summaries of unified knowledge, including product manuals, past appointment data, asset history, and key customer information, to help increase first-time-fix rates and transform field service appointments into revenue opportunities. 

Included in the Einstein 1 Field Service Edition is Salesforce’s recently launched Einstein Copilot Beta to assist workers and automate tasks while on-site. This customizable, conversational, generative AI assistant for CRM can answer questions, provide tailored pre-work briefings, and generate work summaries. 

Why it matters: 78% of high-performing field service organizations are open to using AI to be more productive and increase margins by quickly onboarding and upskilling teams, reducing service times, and increasing first-time-fix rates. 

Salesforce perspective: “Unlike office workers, field technicians have long been on their own to address projects and resolve issues without real-time views of things like asset condition, maintenance, and repair history. Now, with Einstein 1 Field Service Edition, technicians have access to trusted technologies like AI and automation together with their enterprise data from the field to get jobs done right the first time, driving both productivity and revenue.” – Taksina Eammano, EVP & General Manager of Field Service

Now, with Einstein 1 Field Service Edition, technicians have access to trusted technologies like AI and automation together with their enterprise data from the field to get jobs done right the first time, driving both productivity and revenue.

Taksina Eammano, EVP & General Manager of Field Service

What’s new: Einstein 1 Field Service Edition leverages the full power of Salesforce for Field Service. Now, an organization can streamline customer experiences from the time service is requested through completion:

More information:

Pro Suite helps small businesses get the most out of their CRM as they mature, combining marketing, sales, service, and commerce capabilities in one simple, out-of-the-box experience

Salesforce Starter customers can easily upgrade to Pro Suite, unlocking increased customization, automation, and extended functionality


Today, Salesforce announced the general availability of Pro Suite, a flexible, scalable, all-in-one offering to help small businesses get started and scale on the #1 AI CRM. Powered by Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform and Data Cloud, Pro Suite helps customers grow their operations with one ready-to-use and easy-to-implement solution.

Pro Suite expands on the capabilities of Salesforce’s Starter Suite, which includes guided onboarding, reporting templates, pre-built dashboards, and built-in AI to help small businesses get the most out of their CRM from day one. Starter allows employees to handle key tasks quickly, like tracking sales leads, managing customer service cases, sending customer emails, collecting direct payments, and more.  

Pro Suite offers a seamless growth path from Starter Suite for growing businesses with the tools they need to support more complex business processes. In addition to the functionality of Starter Suite, Pro Suite provides advanced features and more customization, such as workflow and process automation, sales forecasting and quoting, and live chat for customer service. 

Pro Suite helps businesses:

Here, Kris Billmaier, SVP and GM of Salesforce Self-Service and Growth Products, discusses how businesses of all sizes can get more out of Salesforce and grow faster using Pro Suite. 

Q. Why did Salesforce build Pro Suite?

A recent survey from Slack found that 40% of small businesses believe 2024 is a ‘make or break’ year for their business — and that technology is a key focus for them. They’re worried about updating their technology without the budget to do so, and feeling like the tech they use for their business is outdated. 

A recent survey from Slack found that 40% of small businesses believe 2024 is a ‘make or break’ year for their business — and that technology is a key focus for them.

Kris Billmaier, SVP and GM of Salesforce Self-Service and Growth Products

To help, we wanted to bundle the best of our products for small business owners in a way that is both affordable and easy to use. And, we wanted to make it quick to implement and scale with an intuitive UI so these business owners can find success quickly.

Q. How is Pro Suite different than Starter Suite?

Starter Suite was built to help small businesses who needed a simple, out-of-the-box CRM that could quickly provide value across their business, and the feedback that we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. They love the simple-to-set-up, easy-to-use capabilities that span the marketing, sales, service, and now, commerce needs of their businesses.

What we also found was that many customers want a seamless growth path to unlock additional functionality as their business grows more complex. That drove us to build Pro Suite, which has stronger customization, automation, and integration capabilities, along with more advanced sales and service functionality to support businesses that are ready for the next stage of growth.

Pro Suite offers all of the goodness of Starter Suite with more advanced features from our enterprise platform like Forecast Management, Direct Payment Links, In-App and Web messaging, Custom Apps and Objects, Flow Automation, and access to AppExchange for enhanced functionality.

Q. Who is Pro Suite built for?

We built Pro Suite for growing businesses that needed more tools and customization than Starter Suite could provide them as they scaled.

So, for example, if you’re a small consulting business that’s running multiple tech systems to manage customer emails, phone calls, and meetings, it’s likely that those systems need to be integrated. 

Or if you’re part of an installation team within a larger manufacturing business that needs to manage contractors and subcontractors alongside forecasted revenue and expenses, Pro Suite gives companies the tools to consolidate their sales, service, marketing, and commerce systems into a single view of their operations on one platform.

Q. How does consolidating their systems into a single platform set growing businesses up for success in the future?

In today’s digital-first world, businesses are faced with ever-increasing customer expectations. To meet these demands, they are looking to AI and automation to drive efficiency and grow their business. However, they need a strong data foundation to deliver the trusted experiences customers expect.

This starts with getting all of their customer data together in one place. Pro Suite brings together business data that is usually spread across multiple tech systems and departments, and creates a unified view with Data Cloud. 

Data Cloud connects, federates, and harmonizes any data type from any product and system, and connects it back to the Salesforce applications that business users need to use every day, to deliver a comprehensive, 360-degree view of customers and power CRM, AI, automation, and analytics across any business process.

Q. What separates Pro Suite from its competitors?

Pro Suite is backed by the full power of Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform. Unlike its competitors, Salesforce has been a long-time leader in CRM and we’ve built Pro Suite on that same, extensible platform that has been the foundation of our customers’ success for 25 years.

Unlike its competitors, Salesforce has been a long-time leader in CRM and we’ve built Pro Suite on that same, extensible platform that has been the foundation of our customers’ success for 25 years.

Kris Billmaier, SVP and GM of Salesforce Self-Service and Growth Products

Pro Suite empowers customers to quickly and easily get started on the world’s #1 AI CRM and scale seamlessly. Unlike other point solutions, customers will never outgrow Salesforce. We have a variety of solutions — big and small — for every unique business need or industry. Salesforce customers will never have to rip and replace existing implementations to get the right-sized solution for their needs. We offer a variety of fully customizable upgrade paths from Starter and Pro Suite all the way up to our top Einstein 1 Sales Edition.

Q. How are customers finding success with Pro Suite?

Many customers are already seeing success with Pro Suite. One example is Nucliq, a preventive healthcare company with 10 employees, which develops at-home gut health tests. 

As they were looking to expand into the B2B market, Nucliq needed a CRM that could organize data from their different systems and spreadsheets, and a solution that was easy to learn and could scale up with them as they grow. After evaluating other options like HubSpot and Monday.com, they decided on Pro Suite.

Now, Pro Suite provides them with a single source of truth for all of their deals so they can track deal flows. They also have visibility into planning timelines, so they can manage their manufacturing forecast and can track kits that get delivered to clinics, allowing them to resolve customer inquiries easily.

Availability:

More information:

At TraiblazerDX, Salesforce’s annual developer conference, hundreds of attendees achieved a unique feat — breaking the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for the largest gathering of people dressed as Albert Einstein. Their lofty aim? Break records, have fun, and (of course) celebrate Salesforce’s advancements in generative AI.

Together with the collective genius of our Trailblazers, we’re not just breaking records – we’re using trusted AI to deepen customer relationships, increase productivity, and drive higher margins for our customers in this critical new chapter for technology.

Colin Fleming, EVP of Global Brand Marketing

The Salesforce perspective: “With our Einstein 1 Platform and Einstein Copilot, Salesforce is empowering everyone to be an Einstein,” said Colin Fleming, EVP of Global Brand Marketing. “Together with the collective genius of our Trailblazers, we’re not just breaking records – we’re using trusted AI to deepen customer relationships, increase productivity, and drive higher margins for our customers in this critical new chapter for technology.”

Everyone’s an Einstein, and Salesforce proved it at TrailblazerDX.

Fast facts:

Highlights from the event

The moment when history was made.
Celebrations as a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title is officially broken.
Geniuses participate in the celebration.
The event featured a live DJ, light bites, giveaways, and more.

More information:

In the same week that Salesforce celebrated its 25th birthday, the company officially opened its new office in Auckland, New Zealand. Situated in the heart of Auckland’s central business district (CBD), the office is on the doorstep of Britomart and Commercial Bay, offering panoramic, sweeping views of Auckland Harbour and the Hauraki Gulf.

This new space will serve as a central gathering place for connection and learning, a pillar of Salesforce’s culture and values, and an important space for employees, customers, partners, and local communities across New Zealand.

This new space will serve as a central gathering place for connection and learning, a pillar of Salesforce’s culture and values, and an important space for employees, customers, partners, and local communities across New Zealand.

Salesforce’s commitment to New Zealand

This week’s office opening comes at a time of exciting growth of Salesforce’s Australia and New Zealand business, and follows the opening of Salesforce Sydney Tower in 2022, as well as two additional offices in Melbourne. This new office is expected to unlock even more growth opportunities to deepen the company’s impact in New Zealand.

Over the last 18 years that Salesforce has operated in New Zealand, the company has welcomed local customers like NZ Post, Jaguar Land Rover New Zealand, and The Warehouse Group, has built a strong partner ecosystem, and welcomed thousands of Trailblazers into the fold.

As Salesforce has grown in New Zealand, it has also scaled its impact in the community. Through its 1-1-1 philanthropic model, Salesforce has given over $78,000 (USD) in grants to local nonprofits, and local employees have contributed over 17,000 volunteer hours to the community. Over 140 local nonprofits use Salesforce technology, and over 30 New Zealand companies have joined Pledge 1%.

Today, Salesforce also announced a grant of $10,000 NZ to Auckland City Mission to help support the community of Auckland.

Designed with modern work in mind

Like every Salesforce office, the new Auckland office space has been built in a way that will positively impact all stakeholders‌ — ‌employees, customers, partners, communities, and the planet.

It follows Salesforce’s global design standards, using healthy and sustainable materials. The interiors embrace the look and feel of Salesforce’s existing office spaces and have been designed for how employees work today.

Spanning 10,000 square feet (950 square meters), the office features a blend of collaborative and communal areas and space for heads-down, focused work to offer continued flexibility and choice for employees. The space is also equipped with 76 workstations, enclosed meeting rooms, open collaboration zones, and multi-purpose social and event spaces.

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In-home healthcare provider HarmonyCares has selected Salesforce Health Cloud to scale its Care Management and Engagement Center after the success of its Complete Health Assessment (CHA), a scheduling platform enhanced by Salesforce Field Service that makes it easier for patients to schedule visits. 

Why it matters: HarmonyCares is one of the largest providers of in-home physician services for older adults and patients with chronic medical conditions in the United States. Partnering with Salesforce has improved accessibility for patients and group members who are often high-risk, in-home patients that need priority care and support services. 

What’s the impact: Since launching its original platform with Salesforce, HarmonyCares has seen a 50% increase in self-scheduling, improving patient scheduling interactions with a more efficient, streamlined process. The implementation has also helped the organization increase face-to-face visits with patients, assisting the organization’s continued efforts to improve patient outcomes and quality, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, minimize hospital re-admissions, and increase patient satisfaction and engagement.

What’s next: This year, HarmonyCares is expanding its Salesforce footprint. By leveraging the power of Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform and Health Cloud, HarmonyCares will create a unified platform with better access to actionable data, streamlined processes, and increased collaboration between providers and care teams.

Customer perspective: 

Salesforce perspective: “We are laser focused on helping customers like HarmonyCares improve and scale patient engagement experiences. Now, as HarmonyCares embarks on personalizing the care journey for its patients, we couldn’t be more thrilled they’ve selected Salesforce Health Cloud to assist with this latest implementation that will work to expand and scale care management initiatives.” – Amit Khanna, SVP & GM for Health 

We are laser focused on helping customers like HarmonyCares improve and scale patient engagement experiences.

Amit Khanna, SVP & GM for Health 

Go deeper: 

From wearable health devices to virtual doctor’s appointments, healthcare has come a long way. But there’s one change people don’t want to see: doctors replaced with AI. That’s according to Salesforce’s Pulse of the Patient Snapshot, which surveyed more than 1,400 adults in the U.S. and revealed that 69% of them are uncomfortable with healthcare companies using AI to diagnose them. 

However, people haven’t ruled out AI entirely. More than half of respondents are comfortable with AI in nonclinical use cases, such as scheduling appointments and estimating medical expenses. This indicates an opportunity for healthcare organizations to focus on using AI in areas that free up physicians to spend more time with their patients.

Why it matters: According to an Athenahealth survey, more than 90% of U.S. physicians report feeling burned out on a “regular basis,” especially by overwhelming administrative workloads, reduced staffing, and rising patient expectations. AI can help alleviate the burden of paperwork, clerical requirements, and other nonclinical tasks that have piled up over the years. 

Salesforce perspective: “AI won’t replace doctors, it will ‌augment them. People highly value and trust the personal relationship with their doctors, and AI should be seen as a tool to enhance and support that relationship, rather than a substitute. By automating administrative burdens and streamlining workflows, AI can empower doctors to deliver even better care and personalize patient experiences.” – Amit Khanna, SVP & GM, Health

By automating administrative burdens and streamlining workflows, AI can empower doctors to deliver even better care and personalize patient experiences.

Amit Khanna, SVP & GM, Health

By the numbers:

People trust physicians over AI 

“Gen Z’s reliance on multiple channels for healthcare information is one to watch due to the growing threat of misinformation. However, it also presents an opportunity for healthcare organizations to effectively market trusted information across these channels, rather than focusing on just physicians,” said Khanna.  

People are unclear on AI’s role in healthcare — but know it will have an impact

People worry AI risks patient-provider relationships, security, and data accuracy

AI for nonclinical use cases is right in people’s comfort zone

Today, people are uncomfortable with AI making a diagnosis. However, as the technology improves and becomes more pervasive, people could be more open to AI augmenting physicians in areas such as medical imaging, where AI models trained on vast sets of data can identity subtle patterns in images undetectable to human eyes to detect diseases, or predicting patient risk factors based on analyzing patient data.

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Methodology: Salesforce conducted a double-anonymous general population survey in partnership with YouGov in February 15-23, 2024. The total sample size was 1,443 U.S. adults with or without health insurance coverage. Results are weighted for national representation. 

Definitions: Respondents earning under $52,000 in annual household income were defined as lower income; Respondents earning between $52,000-$156,000 in annual household income were defined as middle income; Respondents earning over $156,000 in annual household income were defined as higher income. 

Gen Z are defined as being born 1997 or later; Millennials are defined as being born between 1981-1996; Gen X are defined as being born between 1965-1980; Baby Boomers are defined as being born between 1946-1964; Silent Generation are defined as being born between 1928-1945.

Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform powers Einstein Copilot with your healthcare organization’s unique data and metadata from Data Cloud to capture and summarize patient details, quickly update patient and member information, and automate manual processes

Assessment Generation digitizes paper assessments and surveys to capture and track patient data

Customers like Baptist Health South Florida and HarmonyCares are using Salesforce to personalize patient interactions and create a single, unified view of each patient 


Today, Salesforce announced AI and data innovations for CRM to help make healthcare operations more efficient and personalized. Einstein Copilot: Health Actions, a conversational AI assistant that will deliver trusted AI responses grounded with your healthcare organization’s own trusted and private data, Assessment Generation, and Data Cloud for Health help automate and streamline clinical summaries, deliver more personalized communication, and help compile tailored patient assessments faster for care teams, all from a single platform.

These new innovations are powered by Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform, which helps organizations safely unlock their data to create better patient experiences and augment employee productivity.

Why it matters: Nearly a quarter of U.S. healthcare spending is wasted on administrative costs, presenting a potential cost savings of up to $320 billion for healthcare organizations, according to McKinsey and Co. AI could be the solution, with recent Forrester data revealing that 82% of healthcare data leaders say AI is a top focus area that will drive operational efficiency. 

The patient perspective: Patients are also open to AI innovation. A recent Salesforce survey found that more than half of U.S. adults are comfortable with the use of AI across nonclinical use cases, such as scheduling appointments and estimating medical expenses. This showcases an opportunity for healthcare organizations to use AI in handling administrative and operational tasks while freeing up providers to spend more time with patients. 

Innovation in action: Salesforce is boosting the efficiency of care teams, service agents, and system administrators with features to help them automate manual tasks like answering questions around benefits coverage and deductibles, segment at-risk populations for targeted outreach and care, and digitize assessments to streamline and improve the patient experience.

Einstein Copilot can generate interaction summaries for the care coordinator, which can be sent to the patient as well as any new primary care provider, and are easily added to records in the system. The call summary includes all details of the interaction as well as clearly-articulated next steps for the patient.

Assessment Generation allows payers and providers to digitize standardized assessments and automatically input questions into the system. These can then be filled out electronically and tracked for progress. 

High-quality AI requires high-quality data and insights: All of these data and AI features are built on Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform, which is powered by Data Cloud, and give healthcare organizations the information they need to create a single view of each patient and surface the right insights:

Healthcare organizations can run Tableau Pulse on Data Cloud for Health to explore their data and drive action from real-time insights. Tableau Pulse empowers every healthcare employee with intelligent, personalized insights delivered right in workflows like email and Slack.

Salesforce perspective: “These new data, AI, and CRM features help reduce the administrative and operational burden for healthcare providers and care teams, leading to better outcomes for their patients. And with Salesforce’s trusted AI, healthcare organizations excited about generative AI — but nervous about clinical and security concerns — can confidently use these innovations in their everyday workflows.” – Amit Khanna, SVP & GM for Health 

These new data, AI, and CRM features help reduce the administrative and operational burden for healthcare providers and care teams, leading to better outcomes for their patients.

Amit Khanna, SVP & GM for Health 

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A recent survey of 600 IT professionals reveals a new mandate from their leaders: incorporate generative AI into the technology stack — fast. IT is pushing back, raising concerns over resources, data security, and data quality. Nearly 3 in 5 IT professionals say business stakeholders hold unreasonable expectations on the speed and agility of new technology implementation. In fact, 88% of IT professionals claim they’re unable to support the deluge of AI-related requests they receive at their organization.

Why it matters: We are in a productivity and efficiency revolution with the introduction of generative AI — businesses are beginning to see productivity gains and executives want a piece of the pie. While businesses seek to stay ahead of the competition by rapidly implementing generative AI, the investment might see diminishing returns without the proper infrastructure, resources, and partners. IT must work with their leadership to ensure that quickly integrating generative AI doesn’t mean sacrificing data security and quality.

Executives are understandably excited about the promise of AI – and productivity gains are a big part of that.

Juan Perez, EVP and Chief Information Officer

Salesforce perspective: “Executives are understandably excited about the promise of AI – and productivity gains are a big part of that. CIOs and IT teams can either hang back and potentially miss the opportunity to take advantage of the technology before their competitors, or they can lead the way, rethinking how companies implement trusted AI in a responsible and sustainable manner.” – Juan Perez, EVP and Chief Information Officer

The Salesforce research found:

IT in the hotseat as pressure mounts to implement generative AI quickly

Most IT professionals surveyed (87%) believe generative AI has so far met or exceeded its hype. As a result, IT is tasked with getting the technology implemented — and fast

Generative AI is the #1 technology IT feels pressure to onboard quickly.

As demand increases, IT is at the front lines.

Company leadership prioritizes speed above security and data quality, IT says

According to the research, IT teams identified the C-suite as the #1 influencers demanding fast generative AI implementation. When asked about their team’s priorities compared to those of their leadership, IT reports they’re focused on data security and quality while they view their leadership as prioritizing speed‌. 

Salesforce’s recent Connectivity Benchmark Report further highlights IT’s data concerns, with 95% of IT leaders reporting integration issues as an impediment to AI adoption.

As they juggle various priorities, nearly half (48%) of IT professionals agree that they struggle to find a balance between speed, business value, and security when implementing new technology. 

IT faces AI challenges, putting fast implementation at risk

Amid this pressure to deliver, IT faces rising concerns on how to budget and resource effectively to implement new technologies like AI. 

Additionally, almost one-third (31%) of IT workers say they lack the time to implement and train AI models and algorithms, and nearly half say their infrastructure can’t keep up with demand:

“For those who are ready to lead, approaches like retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can help, both reducing costs from training LLMs while keeping data safe and secure and giving companies a faster time to market with AI-powered solutions,” said Perez.

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In partnership with Vanson Bourne, Salesforce conducted a double-anonymous survey of 600 IT professionals (200 IT leaders and 400 IT individual contributors) in Australia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The survey was fielded in December 2023 and January 2024.