Summary

In this chapter, we started by looking at why we need to bring AI capabilities into our CRM. The key takeaway was that AI capabilities allow you both to personalize and improve the service you deliver to customers, both before and after purchase, in a way that represents a step change in comparison to traditional CRM. Additionally, AI allows you to automate and simplify many labor-intensive processes.

We looked at the layers of the Einstein platform and examined how we can use pre-built solutions to get a head start with AI capabilities. Equally, we looked at both the declarative and the programmatic platform services that you can use to extend the native capabilities.

Then, we took a whistle-stop tour through the different elements that make up the total Einstein offering, including sales, service, marketing, commerce, industry solutions, and platform services. This gave us a sense of both the depth and breadth of the platform as a whole.

Then, we changed tack and looked at the general question of how architecting AI solutions is different from architecting traditional solutions. We learned that seven characteristics define AI architecture, namely that AI solutions are probabilistic, model-based, data-dependent, autonomous, opaque, evolving, and ethically valent. This gave us a starting point for how to approach the deployment of these capabilities in the real world.

Finally, we learned about the fictional company Pickled Plastics Ltd., whose requirements we will be using as a reference throughout the book. And now, with the preliminaries out of the way, we will dive straight into the principal matter of the book and look at AI features for sales.