The News: Salesforce announced the general availability of Service GPT, Sales GPT, and the Einstein GPT Trust Layer, helping enterprises drive productivity and personalize customer interactions with generative AI designed for enterprise security standards. These new tools and features, which were originally announced earlier in the year, reflect Salesforce’s commitment to incorporate generative AI tools in the Q3 timeframe.
Within Service GPT, features include Service Replies, through which Service GPT customers can auto-generate personalized responses grounded in relevant, real-time data sources, helping service agents resolve customer issues faster; and Work Summaries, in which users can create wrap-up summaries of service cases and customer engagements based on case data and customer history.
For Sales GPT customers, users can auto-generate personalized emails with CRM context, either from inside Sales Cloud or through Gmail and Outlook, thereby reducing a time-consuming, yet critical step in the sales process to a single click.
Within the Einstein GPT Trust Layer, which is designed to protect sensitive customer data when it is used via generative AI models, the Einstein GPT Trust Layer prevents customer data from being stored outside Salesforce, meaning prompts and responses are not stored by third-party large language model (LLM) providers, or used to train their model. In addition, all communications between Salesforce and an LLM are encrypted using TLS safeguards.
The Einstein GPT Trust Layer also deploys Data Access Checks, which govern prompts by restricting data grounding to only the data allowed by the user’s permissions. It also uses a Feedback Store, which collects feedback data – including if generated responses were helpful or not, and if, for example, a service agent ultimately accepted, rejected, or modified that response – to improve the quality of prompts over time. Finally, Einstein GPT Trust Layer’s audit trail securely logs all prompts, outputs, interactions, and feedback data so teams can benefit from generative AI while meeting compliance needs.
You can read the original Press Release on the Salesforce website.
Salesforce Announces General Availability of Embedded Generative AI Tools
Analyst Take: Salesforce announced the general availability of Service GPT, Sales GPT, and the Einstein GPT Trust Layer, which are tools and features that are designed to help customers and users leverage generative AI technology to drive improvements in workflow efficiency, speed, and productivity.
Robust Feature Sets and Capabilities
The availability of GPT functions across Salesforce’s Service GPT and Sales GPT offerings is a solid indicator that the company has considered the key types of activities where generative AI can provide real-world benefits, while ensuring that the proper guardrails have been put into place to limit risk. In particular, the use of grounding LLMs with relevant, and real-time data sources is key to ensuring that GPT tools will return accurate and relevant content.
Salesforce’s use of a Feedback Store within the Einstein GPT Trust Layer, which collects feedback data and tracks whether a generated response, content, or summary is ultimately accepted, rejected, or modified by an agent, should help the improve the quality of prompts over time, thereby helping to drive acceptance and use of generative AI technology within the enterprise.
The tools released in the Einstein GPT Trust Layer are key to the entire generative AI ecosystem functioning properly. By implementing specific security protocols and processes, Salesforce has created a “safe” environment for enterprise customers to utilize GPT technology while ensuring that customer data does not leak or is not used to train outside LLMs. Data security remains a key concern for enterprises and their customers, who rightly worry about personal information being used or shared without explicit consent.
Premium Features, Premium Pricing
One of the interesting aspects of the use of generative AI being deployed in SaaS platforms such as Salesforce is the pricing model that is offered to customers. According to Salesforce, Service GPT is available in Service Cloud Einstein Enterprise Unlimited, which is billed at $300 per user, per month. To add GPT features, the additional cost is $50 per user, per month, and this includes access to the Einstein GPT for Service SKU, which is no additional charge and comes with 8,000 generative credits, which equates to approximately 1,000 cases per organization. Based on the organization’s consumption needs, enterprise customers can purchase additional credits in 100-credit packs at $3 each.
For SalesGPT, customers must have Sales Cloud Unlimited Enterprise edition, at a cost of $300 per user, per month, which also includes Sales Cloud Einstein. Then, the customer can add on the Einstein GPT for Sales SKU, which is no additional charge and comes with 8,000 generative credits, equating to about 8,000 emails. As with the ServiceGPT offering, based on their consumption needs, customers can purchase additional credits in 100-credit packs at $3 each.
As of now, only customers who have purchased Unlimited Edition of either Service Cloud or Sales Cloud, both of which provide access to the Einstein SKU, will be eligible to use GPT-powered capabilities, though a Salesforce representative told me that this is expected to evolve over time.
Ultimately, the adoption rate of generative AI tools within any sort of enterprise application will be based upon ROI; Salesforce, like other vendors, appears to place a significant value on these types of tools, and is betting on the value created to justify the separate SKU.
While Salesforce is incorporating useful functionality with its offerings, the additional $50 per user, per month fee for ServiceGPT may force price-conscious enterprises to take a measured approach to providing access to GPT functions, perhaps testing them with a small group of service or sales agents first, before rolling out the features to the entire team.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other insights from The Futurum Group:
Salesforce Leverages AI, CRM, and Real-Time Data to Improve Financial Services CX
Salesforce Unveils Marketing GPT & Commerce GPT for End-to-End Personalization
Salesforce Introduces Generative AI-Enabled Version of Tableau
Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
