Followers of Intelligent Assistance (#IA) and Conversational Commerce (#ConvComm) take note. During Dreamforce (the annual Love Fest for Salesforce’s customers, partners and analysts) the company showcased new products and services that will reverberate throughout the highly volatile #IA Ecosystem.

A series of case studies and product demos demonstrated how myEinstein with the help of a resource called myLightning has enabled Salesforce customers (in this case T-Mobile and Adidas) to power conversational user interfaces for their customers through Web pages, mobile apps or chat platforms that are emblazoned with their own branding and trademarks. As a big point of differentiation, Salesforce spokespeople claim that this can all be done “with clicks, not code,” meaning that the product is targeted to be put to into practice by business unit employees, rather than programmers or developers from the IT department or 3rd parties.

The power of this approach is self-evident. Brands are able to introduce new AI-infused chatbots or virtual agents based on a centralized resources with business logic and data from a multiplicity of sources. As one of the directors of product management for Einstein explained to me, “We don’t decide how our customers’ customers talk to them.” That’s a powerful value proposition.

Last year, Einstein was already one of the major star of Dreamforce. As we noted at the time, it was designed to serve as a ubiquitous “intelligent assistant that provides a customized view of the world to each Salesforce customer or sales rep.” Well, during the intervening year, it looks like the product development folks have been true to their word, and then some. Certainly more pieces have to be put into place, but with likes of Adidas showing how it was able to use the Krux Data Management Platform (DMP) in conjunction with myEinstein and myLightning in order to deliver highly personalized products and services to their customers, the era of omnichannel IA seems that much closer.

Yet, Salesforce can’t expect its competitors in #ConvComm to lay fallow during its Big Show. Facebook, for one, showed its own innovative way to embed Messenger-based chat and chatbots into Web sites, mobile phones and tablets). These plug-ins and related development tools are part of the release of Messenger Platform 2.2. The plug-ins are not generally available yet but is already in use by a beta community that includes: Adore Me, Air France, Argos, Aviva (Eurofil), Bodeaz, Elves, Goibibo, Keto Mojo, KLM, Mermaid Pillow, Spoqa, Total Activation, Volaris and Zalando.

Industry Significance: IA Within Reach

Solutions providers are well aware that they are creating a highly fragmented distribution chain, especially at the Conversational User Interface level. The most sophisticated brand marketers know that they want to cultivate and maintain a “single source of Truth” about their customers, products, promotional offerings, and the like. Salesforce’s approach is powerful for two reasons. The “Clicks not Code” approach democratizes a brand’s ability to support multiple devices and modalities without relying on expensive professional services. In addition, as Adidas demonstrated, the highly-dynamic data that is brought to bear to answer questions or fulfill an order can be under the brand’s control or housed in a centralized DMP.

Beyond that, enterprise decision makers have to be impressed by the speed at which new AI-infused solutions are being developed and brought to market. The speed of technology refresh is staggering and the tools for development and testing of new user interfaces, analysis and reporting of results and ongoing training (both with machine learning and human intervention) are getting to be comprehensible and accessible to a broad spectrum of employees… not just developers. This “democratization of AI” is a big step toward mass deployment of IA.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants