By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Salesforce has introduced a chatbot with the ability to understand and take action on a broad range of service issues without pre-programmed scenarios.
The first fully autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent known as Einstein Service Agent was designed to make customer service far more efficient.
Unlike traditional chatbots, which can only handle specific queries that have been explicitly programmed into their system and don’t understand context or nuance, Einstein Service Agent is intelligent and dynamic.
It was built on the Einstein 1 Platform and interacts with large language models (LLMs) by analysing the full context of the customer’s message and then autonomously determining the next actions to take.
“Salesforce is delivering a future where human and digital agents join forces to improve the customer experience,” Salesforce’s Head of Solution Engineering for Africa, Ms Linda Saunders, said.
“Einstein Service Agent, our first fully autonomous AI agent, will not just complete service jobs on its own; it will augment how human agents work and completely transform how service teams operate, making them far more efficient and productive. We are reimagining customer service for the AI era,” Ms Saunders added.
Currently in pilot and generally available later this year, Einstein Service Agent can be set up in minutes with user-friendly interfaces, pre-built templates, and low-code actions and workflows.
The programme uses generative AI to create conversational responses — grounding its responses in a company’s trusted business data, including Salesforce CRM data — tailored to a company’s brand voice, tone, and guidelines with a few clicks.
For service organisations, this means they can offload a large number of tedious inquiries that bog down their productivity so they can focus on tasks that require a human touch. For customers, this means they get the answers they need much faster because they no longer need to wait for human agents.
Einstein Service Agent is standing ready 24/7 to communicate with customers in natural language, respond across self-service portals and messaging channels, and perform tasks proactively while operating within clear guardrails that companies can define using the Einstein 1 Platform.
When more complicated, high-touch issues arise, requiring escalation to a human worker based on the parameters set by the company, Einstein Service Agent performs the handoff quickly and easily.
Einstein Service Agent doesn’t require thousands of lengthy structured dialogues for setup. It can be turned on in minutes with its out-of-the-box templates, Salesforce components, and an LLM.
Companies can even reuse existing Salesforce objects, like flows, Apex code, and prompts, to equip Einstein Service Agent with skills faster and create custom actions that are specific to their business needs using a low-code builder and natural language instructions to save time and money.
Einstein Service Agent can assist customers anytime across self-service portals and messaging channels, like WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, Facebook Messenger, and SMS.
Because the Einstein Service Agent understands text, images, video, and audio, customers can send photos when their issue is too difficult to explain in words.