How to Skill Up for AI with Salesforce
Artificial intelligence is transforming every industry and creating new opportunities for businesses of all sizes. Whether you want to optimize your sales pipeline, automate your customer service, personalize your marketing campaigns, or enhance your analytics, AI can help you achieve your goals faster and smarter.
But how can you get started with AI and leverage its full potential? How can you learn the skills and best practices to implement AI solutions in your organization? And how can you use Salesforce to power your AI initiatives?
In this blog post, we will answer these questions and show you how to skill up for AI with Salesforce.
5 Things You’ll Learn
What is AI and why it matters for your business
Common AI use cases for Salesforce customers
How to access AI capabilities within Salesforce
Ways to Measure and improve your AI outcomes
How to learn AI skills with Trailhead, Salesforce's online learning platform
What is Salesforce AI and why it matters
Salesforce AI is a suite of technologies that enable you to create and deploy AI applications across every sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT interaction at hyperscale. With Salesforce AI, you can:
Generate AI-created content with Einstein GPT, the world's first generative AI for CRM
Predict customer behavior and outcomes with Einstein Prediction Builder
Automate workflows and tasks with Einstein Bots and Einstein Next Best Action
Analyze data and discover insights with Einstein Analytics and Tableau GPT
Build custom AI models with Einstein Platform Services
Salesforce AI is powered by the Salesforce Data Cloud, which ingests, harmonizes, and unifies all of your customer data. You can also connect your data to external AI models from an ecosystem of partners, such as OpenAI, or choose your own model and use natural-language prompts directly within your Salesforce CRM.
According to a recent study by IDC, AI will create $15.7 trillion in global economic value by 2030, and 80% of enterprises will have deployed AI at scale. This means that AI is not a nice-to-have feature, but a must-have capability for any business that wants to thrive in the digital age.
What are some common AI use cases for Salesforce customers
Salesforce customers across every industry and region are using AI to transform their businesses and deliver better outcomes for their customers. Here are some examples of how AI can help you in different areas of your CRM:
Sales: You can use AI to prioritize the best leads, identify opportunities that are on track or at risk, highlight important emails, find colleagues connected to important contacts, and increase forecast accuracy.
Service: You can use AI to deflect routine customer service questions with chatbots, route cases to the right agents, suggest relevant solutions, predict customer satisfaction, and prevent churn.
Marketing: You can use AI to recommend products to customers similar to ones they’ve already purchased or viewed, segment your audience based on behavior and preferences, optimize your email campaigns, create personalized content, and measure your marketing ROI.
Commerce: You can use AI to provide personalized shopping experiences, generate product reviews and ratings, optimize prices and discounts, predict inventory demand, and prevent fraud.
Analytics: You can use AI to analyze your data faster and easier, discover hidden patterns and trends, generate natural language summaries and explanations, create interactive dashboards and visualizations, and ask questions using voice or text.
According to a recent survey by ID, Salesforce customers using AI have seen an average of 32% increase in revenue, 25% increase in customer satisfaction, 23% increase in employee productivity, and 19% decrease in costs.
Examples of potential AI use cases with Salesforce
Once you have learned the fundamentals of Salesforce AI and acquired the necessary skills and certifications, you can start applying them to real-world scenarios that can benefit from AI. To do that, you need to identify your business problem or opportunity, define your goal or success metric, understand your data availability and quality, and choose the right Salesforce AI solution for your use case.
For example,
1. Predict the likelihood of a lead converting to a sale
Use Einstein Prediction Builder to create a custom prediction field on the Lead object, train it with historical data, and display it on a dashboard or report.
You can also use Einstein Next Best Action to recommend the best action for each lead based on their prediction score, such as sending an email or scheduling a call.
Your goal could be to increase your conversion rate by X% in Y months, and your data could include lead attributes such as Industry, Company Size, Source, and Engagement History.
2. Deflect routine customer service questions with chatbots
You can use Einstein Bots to create a conversational interface that can answer common queries, collect information, and escalate issues when needed. You can also use Einstein GPT to generate personalized responses for your customers based on their context, preferences, and sentiment.
Your goal could be to reduce your case volume by X% in Y months, and your data could include customer attributes such as Name, Email, Product, and Feedback.
3. Recommend products to customers similar to ones they’ve already purchased or viewed
Einstein Recommendations allows you to create personalized recommendations based on customer behavior, purchase history, and preferences.
You can also use Einstein GPT to generate product descriptions that highlight the benefits and features of each item.
Your goal could be to increase your average order value by X% in Y months, and your data could include product attributes such as Name, Price, Category, and Rating.
You can find more examples of AI use cases for Salesforce customers on Einstein's Guide to AI Use Cases, an interactive website with 50+ scenarios that can inspire you to bring AI to your business.
What are the main ways to access AI capabilities within Salesforce?
Einstein: Einstein is Salesforce's suite of AI-powered features that are embedded in every cloud and app. Einstein delivers personalized recommendations, predictions, insights, and automation based on your data and processes. You can enable Einstein with clicks or code depending on your level of expertise and control.
Tableau: Tableau is Salesforce's leading analytics platform that helps you see and understand your data. Tableau integrates with Einstein GPT, the world's first generative AI for CRM, which delivers auto-generated content across every salesforce cloud with generative AI. You can use Tableau GPT to create natural language summaries, research tools, writing assistance, and more within Tableau.
MuleSoft: MuleSoft is Salesforce's platform for data integration and API management. MuleSoft helps you connect any data source, application, device, or system across cloud or on-premise environments. MuleSoft enables you to access and unify all your data for AI, regardless of where it lives or what format it is in.
Heroku: Heroku is Salesforce's platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, that supports multiple programming languages, frameworks, databases, and tools. It allows you to build custom AI apps using open-source libraries, frameworks, and services.
AppExchange: AppExchange is Salesforce's marketplace for ready-to-install apps, components, bots, data sets, and more. AppExchange offers hundreds of AI solutions from Salesforce partners that can help you solve specific business challenges or extend the functionality of Salesforce.
3 ways to measure and improve your AI outcomes with Salesforce
After you have implemented your AI solution with Salesforce, you need to measure its performance and impact on your business outcomes. You also need to monitor its accuracy, reliability, and fairness over time while making adjustments as needed.
Some of the ways you can measure and improve your AI outcomes with Salesforce are:
1. Use dashboards and reports to track key metrics such as prediction score distribution, bot conversation rate, recommendation click-through rate, etc.
You can also use Einstein Analytics or Tableau GPT to create interactive visualizations that show deeper insights into your data and help you identify trends, patterns, and anomalies.
2. Use feedback loops to collect user feedback on your AI solution and use it to improve its quality and relevance. For example, you can ask users to rate or comment on the predictions, responses, or recommendations generated by your AI solution and use their input to refine or retrain your model.
3. Use bias mitigation tools to detect and prevent potential bias in your data or model that could affect its fairness or accuracy. For example, you can use Einstein Data Check to scan your data for imbalances or outliers that could skew your results or exclude certain groups of customers. You can also use Einstein Fairness Check to monitor your model for disparate impact or discrimination against protected groups based on factors such as age, gender, race, etc.
By measuring and improving your AI outcomes with Salesforce, you can ensure that your solution is delivering value to your business and customers.
How to access Salesforce AI resources and training
If you want to skill up for AI with Salesforce, you have access to a wealth of resources and training that can help you learn the basics, master the advanced features, and get certified as a Salesforce AI expert.
4 Salesforce AI resources and training you can use
Trailhead - the fun and easy way to learn Salesforce skills online. You can find modules, projects, trails, and superbadges on various topics related to Salesforce AI, such as Einstein Prediction Builder Basics, Build a Chatbot with Einstein Bots, Create an Intelligent Experience with Next Best Action, Analyze Data with Einstein Analytics, Build Custom Models with Einstein Platform Services, etc.
Einstein's Guide to AI Use Cases - an interactive website that helps you identify your perfect use case for Salesforce AI based on your industry, role, goal, data availability, and complexity. You can browse through 50+ examples of how other companies have used Salesforce AI to solve their business challenges.
Salesforce Developer Center - a hub for developers who want to build custom AI solutions with Salesforce. You can find documentation, tools, code samples, tutorials, events, blogs, podcasts, videos, forums, and more on how to use Salesforce APIs, SDKs, frameworks, libraries, and services for AI development.
Salesforce Certification - a program that validates your skills and knowledge of Salesforce technologies. You can earn credentials that demonstrate your expertise in various aspects of Salesforce AI, such as Einstein Analytics & Discovery Consultant, Marketing Cloud Developer, Platform Developer I, etc.
AI is here to stay
AI is a powerful technology that can help you take your business and career to the next level. With Salesforce, you have access to a variety of AI solutions that are easy to use, secure, scalable, and customizable. You also have access to a wealth of resources that can help you learn new skills, find new opportunities, and join a supportive community.
AI is not a futuristic concept anymore. It is a reality that is reshaping every industry and creating new opportunities for businesses of all sizes.
If you want to skill up for AI with Salesforce,
Start today by visiting trailhead.salesforce.com/ai.