Sales have never been easy; today, sales and service teams are loaded with tedious tasks. A sales rep might spend half the day drafting emails and logging data, and only a few hours selling. A support agent might hunt through a dozen systems to answer a simple customer question. This is incredibly inefficient. Salesforce reports that only about 28% of sellers expect to hit their quotas — a sign that too much time is wasted on data recording and reporting. Marketing teams face similar struggles, cranking out copy and reports instead of focusing on strategy. The result? Missed opportunities, unhappy customers, and exhausted employees.
The pain is real. When teams are tied in routine work, deals slip away, and customers grow frustrated. Without help, employees spend hours on low-value tasks, leaving little room for creativity or relationship-building. A Salesforce survey found that 71% of marketers believe generative AI could “eliminate busy work,” saving them roughly five hours per week. In other words, they feel crushed by manual chores and see AI as the only way out. Without that extra help, companies risk falling behind more agile competitors.
Fortunately, a new kind of assistant is on the scene. Salesforce has integrated generative AI — the same smart tech behind ChatGPT — directly into its CRM products. Now, your CRM can create content and insights on the fly. Think of it as an AI co-pilot that lives inside Salesforce. It knows your customers and data, and it can draft messages, summarise information, and even suggest actions. For example, Salesforce says its Einstein GPT can “generate personalised emails for salespeople,” “specific responses for customer service professionals,” and “targeted content for marketers.” In practice, this means you could log into Salesforce and ask it to write a follow-up email to a client, and it will produce a customised draft in seconds. This isn’t a generic answer from the internet; it’s built on your own CRM data and company knowledge.
Generative AI acts like a smart assistant built into Salesforce. Instead of writing everything from scratch, you tell it what you need and it writes a first draft for you, all based on real customer data. This frees employees to focus on strategy and relationships rather than busywork. Salesforce calls Einstein GPT “the world’s first generative AI for CRM,” combining its own AI with advanced language models to make every employee more productive.
Generative AI for Sales Teams
Sales reps are experiencing significant relief from all of these tools. Salesforce’s latest Sales AI capabilities can auto-generate emails, schedule a meeting, and set next steps for you. Just say to your CRM, “Send an email about cross-selling product X to company A,” and a few seconds later, receive a ready-to-send draft with the correct tone and specifics. AI is also able to scan previous calls and notes, extracting important details, and it saves time and effort. For instance, Einstein AI Insights transcribes and summarises sales calls in a matter of moments, alerting you to customer objections, competitor names, or crucial pricing conversations. It even examines your pipeline: generative AI reviews open opportunities and other factors to determine which deals are likely to close. The result? You’re spending less time guessing which accounts to pursue and more time engaging high-potential buyers.
In reality, those AI assistants shift things. Salesforce finds that with Einstein GPT, reps are spending less time on data entry and more on actually selling, which equals faster outreach and more closed opportunities. For example, Einstein GPT leverages real-time data to create “highly personal, relevant prospect emails” so teams can spend less time typing and more time engaging with clients. It also qualifies leads automatically, so you only speak with the right contacts at the right time. In fact, industry analysts point out that companies using AI are already opening up 30% of employee time for value-added activities. Sales teams are free to use that extra time developing key relationships or coming up with winning plans instead of fighting with tasks that AI is designed to perform.
Intelligent Customer Service
Service teams also have an advantage. Support agents usually get repetitive queries and complicated case histories. Now, with generative AI, support agents are given an assistant. Einstein GPT for Service is capable of authoring knowledge base articles based on previous case notes and even “automatically generate personalised agent chat responses” to clients. In short, rather than beginning from scratch, an agent is provided with a customised reply within a matter of seconds and is able to modify it according to their needs. This accelerates assistance and makes responses consistent.
The numbers are already remarkable. Salesforce’s AI-based service tools reduced response times by a huge margin at Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed). PenFed integrated its core banking infrastructure and member data into Salesforce and deployed AI-powered chatbots and virtual agents. Now, 60% of member queries go through those AI-based channels, so members receive instant answers on their own. Chats and bot interactions surged 223%, and first-call resolution increased by 20%. In a nutshell, customers receive answers sooner, and human agents handle tougher issues. PenFed’s experience demonstrates what’s possible with generative AI for transforming the support centre into a smooth-running, largely self-service operation.
Machine-Driven Marketing and Personalisation
Marketing teams are constantly being pushed to create content and campaigns — an ideal application for AI’s imaginative capabilities. Einstein GPT for Marketing can “dynamically generate personalised content to connect with customers” for email, social, web, and ads. Require three alternative subjects for a series of customer segments? AI will write them. Need a draft of a promotional text or advertisement copy? AI can do that too. Because it’s based on your Salesforce data, the tone and promotions can be customised based on actual customer interest. That’s a massive time-saver. Salesforce’s research established that 71% of marketers believe that generative AI will remove busywork for them. On average, they estimate it will save more than five hours a week — essentially a full month every year — allowing them to return to strategic and creative tasks.
Early indications confirm such optimism. Several businesses have conducted AI-based A/B tests and experienced improved engagement. And since Salesforce integrates all of this into Marketing Cloud, content generation is tied directly back into campaigns and analytics. You receive tailored emails or ads nearly instantly, then shape them based on real-time input. More simply put, marketing teams have an AI copywriter and strategist at their disposal, enabling them to deliver a message at the right time to the right individual.
Increasing Team Productivity
Generative AI is for more than just customers — it benefits internal teams, too. With Salesforce owning Slack, they also embedded AI into Slack chat. AI within Slack can summarise lengthy channel conversations, dig through previous messages for answers, and even pull relevant CRM information from Salesforce — simply by asking plain-English questions. This addresses that old “I missed that meeting, now I need to read 500 messages” challenge. Salesforce estimates that AI features within Slack save every user nearly 97 minutes every week. That’s about two additional workdays back in your team’s hands every month!
Real customers validate massive benefits. SpotOn, a retail software firm, reported to Salesforce that during a pilot of Slack AI “Slack AI has accelerated our employees’ work exponentially,” with “significant productivity benefits” for their staff. Anthropic, an AI firm, discovered that users of Slack AI were a “huge productivity increase” — staff could immediately find answers and work on high-value activities. Even within Salesforce CRM, new Copilot functionality allows a sales representative to request a personalised close plan or deal analysis within Sales Cloud, rather than sifting through reports. In all instances, there is a consistent theme: routine internal tasks are taken care of by AI so individuals can work smarter.
Case Study: PenFed Credit Union’s Success Story
PenFed’s experience is a prime demonstration of these advantages at work. As the second-largest US federal credit union, PenFed required quick service and secure data. They leveraged Salesforce’s Data Cloud and MuleSoft to unify customer data, then created AI chatbots within Financial Services Cloud. The chatbots serve up AI-driven responses based on actual account data. The result was staggering: 60% of member complaints are now self-service, courtesy of the chatbots, with total chatbot usage increasing 223%, and first-call resolution rising by 20%. In everyday terms, a member interested in moving money or checking a balance is immediately able to receive assistance from an AI assistant, as opposed to waiting around. This change benefited member satisfaction and also freed up PenFed’s staff to focus on more challenging cases and strategic pursuits.
Conclusion
Generative AI isn’t a magic wand — it depends on quality data and oversight. As the Salesforce AI leader said, “Data is fuel for AI — without high-quality, trusted data, it becomes ‘garbage in, garbage out.’” Many marketers remain cautious; 39% say they don’t know how to safely use generative AI, and many worry about accuracy. That’s why Salesforce includes safeguards like the Einstein Trust Layer and Data Cloud, ensuring AI outputs are based on secure, private data, not random web content. AI suggestions should be treated as first drafts, reviewed and refined before use. With strong data governance and training, the benefits outweigh the risks.
We’re entering a new era of CRM — moving from passive data systems to AI-enhanced platforms that assist creatively and analytically. Companies already use these tools to save time and boost engagement. The key: start with a secure, focused rollout (e.g., email drafts), then scale once results are clear. As CEO Marc Benioff puts it, every company will undergo an AI transformation. Generative AI in Salesforce empowers people — it helps sales, service, and marketing teams spend less time on busywork and more time delivering value.
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