by Jim Lundy
Salesforce announced Einstein Voice ahead of Dreamforce, but yesterday, the big unveil showed that Apple Siri is powering Einstein Voice, which is currently under development. Yesterday, Apple and Salesforce announced a new strategic partnership at Dreamforce.
Salesforce Einstein Voice and Siri
The demo was compelling. Through voice dictation, a sales person can receive their daily brief, update an opportunity, and add a task. Siri is providing the front-end while Salesforce Einstein performs a lot of behind-the-scenes work.
The demo (captured in the video) was impressive and although it was a prototype, it showed a functional voice interface that will allow sales reps to dictate a Salesforce update via voice, rather than typing it.
Einstein Voice Bots and Conversational AI
Salesforce also announced that Salesforce customers will be able to build their own voice bots using Einstein Voice. This move clearly puts Salesforce right into the middle of the conversational AI battle. The only problem is that all of the other cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and IBM) have their platforms available now.
Einstein Voice is launching as a beta as part of winter ’19. The full release is later in 2019. Einstein Voice Bots will be in beta as part of the summer ’19 release.
Einstein Voice, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant
Salesforce is going to make Einstein Voice a low-code experience. Salesforce claims that the custom voice bots can be developed by a Salesforce admin and deployed to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. These moves also help to round out the Salesforce voice story and given the low-code approach, we expect Einstein Voice to be popular once it is available.
While there is other news—including connecting more customer data across Salesforce clouds and an enhanced relationship with Amazon—Einstein Voice is the top story so far at Dreamforce. Look out for more summaries as the week progresses.