AI at Work: 11 Ways AI Can Automate Routine Tasks in Salesforce

As a leader in sales, you’re constantly seeking innovative ways to streamline your operations, improve efficiency, and consistently exceed your targets. Companies increasingly explore leveraging AI to optimize their operations and gain an edge in an ever-changing and competitive business environment. 

By the end of this read, you'll discover how AI can enhance lead scoring, automate opportunity management, and streamline customer sentiment analysis, ultimately freeing you to focus on strategic initiatives.

As part of our AI at Work series of webinars, we sat down with several industry leaders to discuss, “7 Ways AI Can Automate Routine Tasks in Salesforce." Of course, when you gather luminaries in a room to discuss a topic as important and far-reaching as AI and Salesforce, you’ll be hard-pressed to get them to stick to just seven tips. Hence how we landed on 11!

In this blog, we explore how AI-driven automation can not only enhance productivity in Salesforce but also how AI can remove mundane tasks from your workflows, allowing you to focus on what really matters. 

AI helps fix common sales challenges

Sales teams in larger organizations typically use a range of applications to track deals and deliver on their ambitious targets.  However, sales representatives often find these many applications challenging to navigate, leading to several key issues:

• Unproductive sales reps: According to research done by Salesforce, “nearly 70% of sales reps say they’re overwhelmed by the number of tools, and 9 out of 10 sales organizations plan to consolidate their tech stacks over the coming year so reps can spend more time selling and connecting with customers.” AI can cut down on time spent doing things like looking for documents, information, or contacts, freeing sales teams to spend time selling. 
• Overwhelmed sales teams: The influx of customer inquiries and deal status updates inundates sales teams, leading to extended sales cycles.
• Untapped system potential: Many technologies remain underutilized, and critical information remains siloed in individual applications. This prevents sales teams from fully leveraging tools and uncovering insights across applications that could enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

Why consider using AI with Salesforce?

Integrating AI with Salesforce can transform how sales teams operate, providing them with rapidly accelerating tedious processes. By leveraging AI, you can tackle significant sales workloads head-on, streamlining processes and maximizing your team's potential.

• Enhanced lead scoring: AI can provide more accurate and dynamic lead scoring by analyzing large datasets and identifying patterns that indicate a lead’s likelihood to convert. This allows your sales team to prioritize high-potential prospects more effectively. 
• Automated opportunity management: AI can track the progress of sales opportunities and generate follow-up reminders or next-step recommendations, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. 
• Customer sentiment analysis: Use AI to analyze customer communications and feedback, automatically detecting sentiment and identifying urgent issues that need immediate attention. This helps in proactively managing customer satisfaction and retention. 
• Contract and proposal automation: AI can streamline creating and managing contracts and proposals by auto-filling repetitive information and checking for compliance with predefined standards. 
• Resource allocation optimization: Using AI, Salesforce can analyze rudimentary project requirements and team availability. However, for more robust resource allocation, like optimizing project timelines, and minimizing bottlenecks, it’s recommended to leverage third-party applications that integrate with Salesforce.

Native AI tools in Salesforce

Salesforce includes a variety of AI tools designed to enhance your CRM experience. Some of the key tools include: 

• Einstein Discovery: Provides predictive analytics and actionable insights directly within Salesforce, helping you to understand patterns and trends. 
• Einstein Bots: Automates customer interactions through chatbots, offering 24/7 support and freeing your human agents to tackle more complex tasks. 
• Einstein Next Best Action: Recommends the best subsequent actions for sales and service users based on predefined rules and predictive models. 
• Einstein Vision: Enables image recognition capabilities to better understand visual data and automate image-related tasks. 

Most of these AI tools are included with Salesforce license, enhancing various aspects of your CRM operations, from sales and service to marketing.

How to integrate AI into Salesforce

Before implementing AI in Salesforce, you’ll want to understand the capabilities and benefits of native Salesforce AI tools, such as Einstein, which offer built-in solutions for predictive analytics and intelligent automation tailored specifically for Salesforce environments. 

However sometimes your needs will go beyond what’s supported by Salesforce’s solutions. You can consider integrating an external AI tool, but should ensure compatibility with Salesforce's architecture and data models, and plan for seamless data flow between systems to maximize efficiency. With third party tools, be sure to consider the potential need for customization and training to fully leverage AI capabilities and align them with your sales processes and goals.

1. Identify key areas for automation: Determine which routine tasks can benefit most from AI integration. Prioritize high-impact areas such as lead scoring, customer support, and data entry.
2. Using native Salesforce AI tools: Utilize tools like Salesforce Einstein for predictive analytics, natural language processing, and intelligent automation.
3. Integrating third-party AI tools: Incorporate specialized AI solutions from third-party providers to enhance functionalities like lead scoring, customer segmentation, and sentiment analysis.
4. Custom AI model development: Develop and deploy custom AI models using platforms like Salesforce's AI Cloud or by leveraging APIs to meet specific business requirements.
5. Utilizing pre-built AI apps from AppExchange: Integrate pre-built AI applications available on the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace to add advanced capabilities quickly.
6. Leveraging machine learning platforms: Connect Salesforce with external machine learning platforms like AWS SageMaker, Google Cloud AI, or Microsoft Azure AI for more complex AI-driven insights.
7. Implementing chatbots: Deploy AI-driven chatbots within Salesforce to automate customer interactions and improve service efficiency.
8. Integrating AI-powered data enrichment tools: Enhance your Salesforce data quality and completeness using AI-powered data enrichment and cleansing tools.
9. Training and adoption: Educate your team on the benefits and functionalities of the new AI tools. Promote a culture of innovation to encourage acceptance and utilization. 
10. Monitor and optimize: Continuously monitor the performance of AI tools and make adjustments as needed. Use analytics to measure the impact and refine your strategies for ongoing improvement. 

Extend and expand what’s possible in Salesforce with AI Agents

Using agentic AI tools revolutionizes how sales teams interact with Salesforce, enabling AI to take autonomous actions across your sales stack, streamline workflows and skyrocket efficiency,  and make complex tasks simple and accessible. 

When users can automate and complete Salesforce tasks by chatting with an AI assistant, productivity greatly increases. Your sales team can immediately access, update, and analyze data without navigating multiple systems, significantly reducing task completion time. 

This instant capability accelerates workflows and empowers sales reps to focus on high-value activities, driving better results across the board. With AI agents, the potential for enhanced productivity and strategic decision-making is boundless, enabling your team to achieve unparalleled success.

Use cases and demos

The webinar primarily focused on demonstrating several use cases. But before we dive into the use cases, we highly recommend checking out the many Salesforce specific plugins in our Plugin Library. Now, back to the use cases:

1. Salesforce information navigation and updates 

Users can pull up relevant Salesforce records by asking simple conversational questions without logging into the system. For example: 

• Querying Account Details: "Can you grab the details for the Nebula account for me?" 
• Assigning a New Owner: "I'm the new owner. Can you reassign it to me?" 
• Checking Ongoing Opportunities: "Do we have any ongoing opportunities with Nebula?" 

2. Notifications for changes in other systems 

With AI users can Receive prompt notifications when relevant changes are made in Salesforce or other integrated systems. For instance, you'll immediately know if a new contact is added to a critical account. This plug in idea, aims to notify users when an account is up for renewal.

3. Customer research and information distillation 

AI can automate the research process by pulling relevant customer information from various sources, even summarizing long financial documents like 10-K reports. 

4. Drafting emails 

Employees can leverage AI to automate the creation of tailored email drafts based on existing Salesforce content and recent interactions, saving significant time and ensuring consistency in communication. 

5. Managing expense reports 

AI tools can help users look up and manage expense reports through the conversational interface, enhancing the efficiency of administrative tasks adjacent to sales. 

6. Calendar navigation and meeting scheduling 

AI can efficiently integrate calendar systems to easily schedule follow-up meetings. Users can even ask the copilot to set up calls or meetings, streamlining calendar management. 

7. Handling internal project information 

These tools help users integrate with project management tools like monday.com or Asana to pull up project details or statuses related to specific accounts or opportunities.

8. Advanced calendar navigation and meeting scheduling

Ordinarily, meeting scheduling involves multi-step processes such as navigating various calendars and coordinating time slots. With AI, these steps can be streamlined into an integrated interface. For instance, users can quickly look up a colleague’s calendar and schedule a call without ever leaving their conversational interface:

• Scheduling meetings: "Can you schedule a 4:30 PM slot for a call with Shane?"
• Notifications on updates: Users receive immediate notifications when successfully creating calendar events.

9. Proactive document retrieval and expense management

Besides simplifying calendar navigation, AI can enable easy access to documents and expense reports without needing to switch between multiple systems:

• Expense report status: "Do you have any information on the New York fence report?"
• Managing multiple expense reports: "Do I have other expense reports waiting to be paid out?"

10. Drafting emails and handling internal requests

Whether it's drafting an email or managing internal requests, AI agents supports users by simplifying these workflows:

• Automated email drafting: Users can quickly generate email drafts by pulling relevant content from Salesforce and recent interactions.
• Handling internal inquiries: "Can you tell me about Acme?" and get responses in any preferred language.

11. Combining data from various systems

Ai agents also support querying and fetching data from numerous integrated systems like monday.com, Asana, Hubspot, SharePoint, etc., ensuring all relevant information is just a query away:

• Cross-system queries: Effortlessly access project details, look up contacts, and combine data across systems.

Unlocking new levels of productivity with AI and automation

AI and automation within Salesforce and other integrated systems can significantly reduce the time spent on routine tasks, improving overall productivity and efficiency. 

Moveworks’s AI Assistant is designed to streamline sales team support through automation. The AI Assistant acts as a conversational interface, enabling sales team members to quickly complete tasks and answer questions.

This setup improves individual and organizational efficiency by bridging the gap between complex enterprise systems and user interactions.

Creator Studio by Moveworks extends the functionality of Moveworks AI Assistant by connecting to a broader range of enterprise systems, enabling:

1. Data lookups: Retrieve information such as open opportunities or account owner details in Salesforce.
2. Workflow automation: Engage in custom conversations that lead to specific actions, like transferring account ownership or scheduling follow-up meetings.
3. Proactive notifications: Trigger alerts and notifications to users that allow immediate action within the conversational interface.

Our webinar provides a glimpse into the transformative potential of Salesforce and also tools like Moveworks and Creator Studio. 

If you’re interested in learning more, check out the complete webinar on Salesforce AI Use Cases to Automate Routine Tasks.

For more information, visit our Plugin Library or request a demo to see how Moveworks can accelerate your AI journey.