Salesforce.com Inc.’s Service Cloud grew 50 percent faster than its flagship customer relationship management platform in 2018, ending the year with revenue of more than $2.8 billion. Today, the company introduced a set of new artificial intelligence features in a bid to further boost this demand.

The update expands upon Service Cloud’s customer care and support capabilities by automating a number of core help desk tasks. The first new feature, dubbed Case Routing, aims to simplify the process of directing customers in need of assistance to the representatives most qualified to handle their inquiries.

Case Routing uses AI to match tickets to agents. It decides who should take an inquiry by looking at the skill set and designated focus area of each help desk representative, as well as their track record in handling similar requests.

Once an agent has been assigned a case, they can use the pair of other AI features that Salesforce debuted today to answer the customer’s question. The first capability is called Einstein Article Recommendations and can scan a company’s internal knowledge base for entries that contain information relevant to the request. The other feature, Einstein Reply Recommendations, gives agents real-time suggestions on what to say when interacting with a customer via chat.

Rounding out the update is a new integration focused on more complex cases where the AI-generated tips may not be enough. Service Cloud now lets support representative use Quip, Salesforce’s chat and document editing toolkit, to request input from colleagues without having to open a new tab. Users can also coauthor knowledge base articles in the Service Cloud interface.

Today’s update is the latest in a series of AI-infused enhancements that Salesforce has released for Service Cloud in recent months. Previously, the company launched a tool that enables companies to build custom chatbots to automate repetitive customer support tasks and free up time for their help desk teams.

Photo: Salesforce