As we look at the current trajectory of enterprise technology, it’s clear that platforms such as Salesforce Data Cloud are essential for driving artificial intelligence-powered customer experiences.

Organizations are pushing toward more intelligent, human-like interactions across customer experiences, moving beyond chatbots to AI-powered agents. This trend reflects a growing need to leverage both human expertise and AI capabilities to create seamless, scalable systems that redefine customer relations, according to David Schmaier (pictured), president and chief product officer of Salesforce Inc.

David Schmaier, president and CPO of Salesforce, talks to theCUBE about Salesforce Data Cloud at Dreamforce 2024

“We built something new in the last several years called our Data Cloud, which allows you to basically integrate, harmonize and unify all the data together,” Schmaier said. “Our view is the data powers the AI and the agents, and the agents power the customer experience for the next generation. So we’ve really brought it all together with Agentforce.”

Schmaier spoke with theCUBE Research’s Rob Strechay and George Gilbert at Dreamforce, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the role of Salesforce’s Data Cloud in unifying customer data and the broader ecosystem strategy that enables businesses to streamline workflows and enhance customer experiences using AI.

The role of Salesforce Data Cloud in AI-powered interactions

By embedding AI agents within Salesforce’s existing platform, businesses can seamlessly integrate these capabilities without having to start from scratch. The real magic happens when AI learns from the data it processes, enabling more precise and tailored customer interactions. Schmaier pointed out.

“I’ve been working on what we call CRM software for over three decades,” he said. “This is the dream of CRM, where you and I, the three of us all work together and we put data into the system, and the system magically does things for us. Now, the AI agents can do that magic.”

The integration of Salesforce’s Data Cloud is another significant advancement. The cloud not only brings real-time data into the fold but also normalizes and harmonizes it across systems, making AI actionable, Shcmaier explained.

“Now, the data lake, the Data Cloud, takes it further, because we can bring in SAP data, we can bring in billing data. If somebody clicks on a certain product page on your website, you instantly get that,” he said. “That’s a signal that we can send to the right salespeople and say, ‘Hey, somebody just clicked on this page, they might want to buy this particular product.’ That would be good to know instantaneously because leads are sometimes perishable. So we’ve connected all this together.”

A central theme in Salesforce’s vision for the future of AI is the symbiotic relationship between AI agents and human users. Rather than viewing AI as a replacement for human work, Salesforce sees it as an enabler.

“We think that there are some situations where you’re going to want to talk to people, like in the theme park, there might be somebody with an iPad guiding you to the next ride that’s using Salesforce,” Schmaier said. “But we think the intelligence and the smarts and the AI make that all effortless, it makes it the experience that you want. It’s what we call AI that you would really hope to have, an AI that you imagine.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Dreamforce 2024:

Photo: SiliconANGLE