Welcome to this week’s No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. This week: Salesforce improved the Einstein 1 Platform's access to different types of data and announced that its Unlimited Edition+ packages are now available. Sprinkler added generative AI to its conversational bots; Helpshift added generative AI functionality and brought multilingual capabilities to its solution; Zenarate added generative AI features to its agent coaching platform; Vyopta integrated with Zoom's quality of service API. Finally, Vlad Shmunis returned as CEO of RingCentral.
Salesforce Upgrades Einstein 1 Platform and Launches Einstein Copilot Search
The CRM provider announced that it updated its Einstein 1 Platform by adding the Data Cloud Vector Database and Einstein Copilot Search. Before covering the news, some grounding is in order:
- Announced in September 2023, the Einstein 1 Platform allows companies to connect “any data to build AI-powered apps with low-code.” This can impact CRM workflows and other systems connected to the platform.
- Salesforce Data Cloud allows organizations to ingest, organize and unify data across Salesforce and other external data sources.
- A vector database is a “specialized storage system designed to efficiently handle and query high-dimensional vector data, commonly used in AI and machine learning applications for fast and accurate data retrieval.”
So, the new Salesforce Data Cloud Vector Database uses “all business data” to enrich AI prompts, allowing customers to use a variety of data types across their business applications and workflows. The phrase “all business data” refers to both:
- Unstructured data which can include PDFs, emails, documents, and transcripts.
- Structured data which can include purchase history, customer support cases, and product inventory, to power AI, automation, and analytics across Salesforce applications.
Announced in September 2023, Einstein Copilot will be generally available in February 2024. Einstein Copilot Search will enhance Einstein Copilot by providing enterprise teams (sales, customer service, etc.) with an AI assistant that can access the company’s unstructured and structured business data (as referenced above). Einstein Copilot Search will provide citations to source material and it functions within the Einstein Trust Layer.
Data Cloud will power the new Einstein Copilot Search which enhances Einstein Copilot, Salesforce's generative AI assistant. Data Cloud Vector Database and Einstein Copilot Search will be in pilot in February 2024.
(Editor's Note: Check out this article from NJ contributor Tom Nolle for more on training models and the difference between structured and unstructured data.)
Salesforce Launches Unlimited Edition+: A Packaged Suite for Data, AI, and CRM
Salesforce announced the general availability of Unlimited Edition+ (UE+) packages. These include:
- UE+ for Sales which includes everything in the Sales Cloud Unlimited edition, plus Data Cloud, Einstein Credits, Enablement, Sales Planning, Maps, Revenue Intelligence, Slack, and Slack Sales Elevate.
- UE+ for Service which includes everything in the Service Cloud Unlimited edition, plus Data Cloud, Einstein Credits, Service Cloud Voice, Digital Engagement, Feedback Management, Self-Service, Slack, and CRM Analytics.
There is also UE+ for Industries which includes the above with industry-specific data models and capabilities (e.g., for financial services, health care, manufacturing).
Sprinklr Empowers Businesses to Deploy and Scale Generative AI-powered Conversational Bots
The unified customer experience management platform provider launched Conversational AI+ in Sprinklr Service which is a generative AI-powered solution that allows a bot (virtual agent) to be created by defining the bot persona, the functions it has access to, and the skills on which it is trained. The bots can be trained on an enterprise’s website/knowledge base URL or by uploading PDF documents. Another feature of the new solution enables the bot to engage in dynamic and context-specific conversations with customers. Sprinklr Guardrails helps ensure that the generated responses are brand compliant. Sprinklr currently integrates with Google Cloud's Vertex AI (which provides access to the new Google Gemini LLM), OpenAI's GPT models, the customer's own models as well as Sprinklr's proprietary AI.
Helpshift’s AI-driven Advancements for Multilingual Customer Support and Sentiment Analysis
Helpshift, a digital support platform, released new AI-powered capabilities for customer self-service that include:
- AI-powered answers: Powered by ChatGPT, this analyzes customer queries and then finds and summarizes the most relevant FAQ within the chat.
- SmartFAQs: Via a form built into a (Smart)FAQ, customers can initiate contextual chats with the brand.
- Smart intents: An AI-driven intent classification that “understands” why customers are contacting support and then creates a workflow tailored to their individual support issues.
- Language AI for multilingual support: Now integrated into Helpshift, Keywords Studios' proprietary Language AI enables agents to translate customer inquiries. Agents choose their preferred language and then the Language AI translates the agent response into the appropriate language so that both parties can communicate.
- AI sentiment analysis: Empowered by natural language processing (NLP) techniques, this AI capability identifies and categorizes customer emotions (as positive, negative, or neutral) during an interaction. This occurs during Individual messages and changes over time.
Zenarate Launches New Call Analyzer Capabilities to its AI Coach Platform
The call center training services provider introduced the Call Analyzer capability, in which a client's existing call model within AI Coach evaluates real-time agent calls and identifies each agent’s call skill strengths. Zenarate’s AI Coach includes an AI Simulation Training solution to develop agents on brand-specific call skills and best practices through roleplay in life-like conversation, screen, and chat simulations.
According to Brian Tuite, CEO of Zenarate, allows adding Call Analyzer to the AI Coach Platform allows companies to “developing new hire agent call skills through simulation training, scoring agents against the same call skills they were trained on, and closing tenured agent call skill gaps through targeted simulation coaching.”
RingCentral Announces Return of Vlad Shmunis as CEO
Per the UCaaS and CCaaS provider’s announcement: “Tarek Robbiati and RingCentral mutually agreed that Robbiati would separate from the company and resign from the Board of Directors, effective December 8, 2023. Robbiati’s resignation is not a result of any disagreement with the Company or the Board, or any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies, or practices. Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral’s founder and Executive Chairman of the Board has returned to his full-time role as Chief Executive Officer. Shmunis will remain Chairman of the Board.”
Vyopta Integrates Zoom QSS for Zoom Phone Users
The collaboration-centric user experience management provider now has Zoom’s Quality of Service Subscription (QSS) support for Zoom Phones (via the Zoom QSS API), meaning customers have access to real-time reporting and diagnostics. For example, Vyopta’s monitoring and alerts engine can now enable proactive issue detection, root cause identification, and prompt remediation steps.
This Week on No Jitter
In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories:
- Master Telecom Expenses: Control your communication costs and you can put that money to use to grow your business. Here’s why it pays to sweat the details on billing.
- Collaboration Beyond Video Meetings: Online virtual canvases are new spaces that can facilitate the organic flow of ideas, brainstorming sessions, and project collaboration outside of meetings.
- Cisco’s Support for Sustainability: Cisco’s new sustainability-focused CX services intend to help its customers deploy the latest and greatest technologies -- while improving the planet.
