Salesforce: new wares, $4bn UK investment in GenAI – whilst tackling consumer distrust

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Key Takeaways

Salesforce has introduced Sales GPT and Service GPT, integrating generative AI capabilities into its cloud services to enhance productivity and customer interactions.

Despite the advancements in AI, customer distrust remains a challenge, with less than half of consumers trusting companies with their data, prompting Salesforce to emphasize trust, security, and ethics in AI implementation.

Salesforce announced a partnership with Deloitte Digital to leverage trusted AI in CRM, alongside a commitment to invest $4 billion in its UK operations over the next five years, focusing on AI innovation and customer success.

At its World Tour London event, Salesforce introduced the addition of generative AI capabilities, Sales GPT and Service GPT, to enable teams to close deals faster, anticipate customer needs and bolster productivity. Amidst the launch news, the CRM giant also gave a nod to customer distrust with all things generative ai.

As part of this new venture, Sales GPT and Service GPT will embed generative AI into its existing cloud services to help with tasks and auto-generate customer emails, call summaries and account research to elevate the experience of sellers and service teams interacting with customers. Service GPT will also auto-generate service replies and automatically summarize customer interactions into easy-to-access articles for service teams, and will help prepare field service agents before they arrive at service locations.

On the topic of customer faith, Zahra Bahrololoumi CBE, CEO UKI of Salesforce, joked in her World Tour keynote: “When we talk about privacy, hallucinations, data control, bias and toxicity, I’m not talking about a night out in London!”

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“For so many leaders…(AI) is the number one priority,” Bahrololoumi continued. “But your customers are not so eager. That’s because less than half of them trust companies with their data.

“We want to help you harness this technology with trust… We have brought AI into every app, every layer of our platform, every single workflow – and all with trust and security and privacy and scale and ethics at its core.”

Salesforce’s own recent research findings indicated that amid the surge of AI, 73 percent of employees perceived generative AI as introducing new security risks, and almost 60 percent of those intending to use the technology lacked knowledge regarding data security measures.

Also during the World Tour London event, Salesforce announced its new collaboration with Deloitte Digital to help harness the power of trusted AI in Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

As part of the partnership, Deloitte Digital will offer its AI services, industry experience and knowledge of data protection regulations to help organizations implement and scale its AI Cloud service. Together the duo will help customers use AI for CRM to deliver tailored customer experiences and boost company productivity while safeguarding their data. 

Salesforce also pledged to invest $4bn in its UK business over five years, focusing on AI innovation, customer success and growth in the UK.

The company has been investing in the UK for many years and this latest investment builds on a previous five-year investment of $2.5 bn announced in 2018

Additional reporting by Giacomo Lee.