Einstein “Case Predictions” will be available in Salesforce Service Cloud as part of the new release.

Call centers ain’t what they used to be.

That’s because customers rely on an increasingly wide range of tools to connect with businesses, including social media, email, texting, and other messaging platforms. Today, enterprise technology giant Salesforce is rolling out new artificial intelligence tools to keep those communication channels running smoothly, and triage customer service requests as they come in.

Salesforce calls the technology Service Cloud Einstein, extending its Einstein artificial intelligence initiative to its Service Cloud customer service platform. It’s a collection of tools that use machine learning to inform, guide and learn from the work of customer service agents and contact center managers.

Salesforce CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff launched the larger Einstein project last year, promising to bring artificial intelligence to all of the company’s products and services. It’s part of a broader push by the technology industry to develop new systems that learn from large amounts of data to guide and support human activities and decisions.

Using the Service Cloud Einstein tools, managers can see big-picture insights like which contact centers are resulting in the most customer satisfaction and whether certain products are generating more inquiries than others. They can also funnel tickets to specific agents and centers, depending on demand and performance, based on suggestions from the system.

The software also provides information on each customer. If, for example, a customer has a history of reporting low satisfaction, the agent may take a different approach or prepare for a more difficult exchange. Einstein suggests a priority level, based on the customer’s history and the content of their request. The software learns how accurate its prediction was, based on whether the agent accepts or rejects the priority.

Salesforce is also launching a subscription-based app called Intelligent Field Service, which guides customer service agents who make house calls, helping them manage their appointments, organize tasks, and communicate with other members of their team.

The new Service Cloud technologies are rolling out starting today, with some coming later in the year.

[Editor’s Note: Salesforce is a GeekWire annual sponsor.]

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