Top Four Tips For Einstein Success

I recently wrapped up a course for Pluralsight about “Salesforce Einstein: The Big Picture”. By the end of the course, I identified key areas where special attention could bring about success. Here are four specific tips and resources on preparing for your own success.

#1 – Get Your Data in Order

High quality data is crucial for the Einstein engine. Issues like missing records, duplicate entries, and inconsistent data standards can cause problems. It’s important to regularly review and update data to prevent inaccuracies. 

Identifying low quality data can be done using the free Data Quality Analysis Dashboards from Salesforce Labs.

This tool provides reports and dashboards to track data quality for various standard objects. Each dashboard includes a report that you can drill down into for further detail. You can also customize it to monitor additional custom objects.

# 2 -Consider Bias

In computer systems, bias can cause unfair outcomes, even if not on purpose. It’s important to identify and deal with bias to ensure fairness in models and data quality. Here are some types of bias to watch out for:

Measurement Bias: Occurs when data is oversimplified or mislabeled, leading to over or underrepresentation of certain groups. For example, using zip codes could unfairly include or exclude customers from certain areas.

Confirmation Bias: Happens when models reinforce existing belief systems. For instance, a recommendation system based solely on past purchases may limit options for customers.

Association Bias: Occurs when products are connected based on past assumptions, like assuming only girls play with dolls and boys with trucks.

To reduce bias, involve a diverse group in planning and design. Let everyone offer feedback freely and make sure they understand the importance of ethical design and bias detection. This group can also help review results and decide necessary changes.

When choosing training data, consider its source and potential biases. Removing biased data or fields from the dataset can prevent reinforcement of bias in AI systems.

By dealing with bias in the planning and design stages and including a diverse group of participants, we can move towards more fair and ethical AI systems. Check out this blog post for more on how AI can amplify biases.

# 3 -Go with the Flow

Models created with Prediction Builder or Recommendation Builder can produce a score that results in a recommendation. The recommendation is just a suggested action given either to an employee or a customer. For example, “Upsell this customer to the following package our company offers”.

Einstein Next Best Action is a tool used to create an “action strategy” based on that recommendation.

But what is an Action Strategy?

Quite simply it’s a flowchart that automatically executes business logic to generate some type of output. It could be an instruction given to an employee, a task assigned, an email sent, etc. The choices are endless.

For now, you can create strategies with Strategy builder or Flow builder, but be aware that Salesforce plans to retire Strategy Builder in the future, so I suggest only using Flow Builder. If you are not familiar with Flow Builder, now is the time to learn.

It is not difficult to use, but the flows you need to build may be quite complex, so the more comfortable you are using it, the better. I suggest you check out:

Building Flows With Flow Builder

Put Predictions Into Action Using Next Best Action

# 4 – Learn About Prompt Engineering

Are you familiar with ChatGPT? It’s quite the tool, capable of impressive feats. But let’s face it, sometimes it falls short of our expectations. The secret to unlocking its full potential, along with other GPT products from Salesforce, lies in the art of crafting the perfect prompt.

So, what’s a prompt? It’s simply the input you give to ChatGPT or any similar tool to get the desired output. But here’s the catch: getting the right answer often requires some trial and error. You ask a question, ChatGPT responds, and if it’s not quite what you need, you refine your prompt and try again. It’s a bit like a conversation where you keep tweaking your query until you hit the jackpot.

But who has the time to craft elaborate prompts every single time? Not your average Sales or Service rep, that’s for sure. That’s where prompt templates come into play. These are pre-made prompts tailored for specific scenarios. They’re like ready-made templates you can select whenever you need ChatGPT to do something for you.

But here’s the real magic: connecting these templates with your Salesforce data. This is where merge fields come in handy. They allow you to pull in information from Salesforce, making your prompts even more powerful.

Designing a prompt template, especially for something like crafting a customer email, requires careful planning. You need to consider who the email is for, what it aims to achieve, the context, any constraints, and more. It’s an iterative process that involves testing, reviewing, and refining until you get it just right.

Luckily, Salesforce provides tools like Prompt Builder to make this process easier. With Prompt Builder, you can not only include merge fields but also add logic to your templates. This opens up a world of possibilities for common business workflows like email generation or creating text for case summaries.

So, if you want to unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and take your business workflows to the next level, dive into prompt templates and Prompt Builder. And hey, if you need some tips, Salesforce has got you covered with their blog offering 7 tips for powerful prompt design. Happy prompting!

How to Dive into Salesforce Einstein: Your Starting Point!

It’s understandable if you feel overwhelmed by all the AI information hitting you right now. Even though Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016, the attention towards it lately has increased exponentially. And since 2016, Einstein has evolved and added a lot more products.

You might be feeling anxious about catching up?!?

Don’t worry. If you’re ready to dive into Einstein, but not sure where to start, I released a course on Pluralsight called, “Salesforce Einstein: The Big Picture“.  This course will look at all the AI-based products Salesforce provides and offer tips for success.

The majority of products are considered out-of-the-box applications. They are embedded directly inside of CRM applications you use every day. They each serve a very specific function and are easy to use and setup.

There is also the Einstein Platform, which provides powerful tools that allow Admins and Developers to build their own customized AI-based solutions. They use multiple tools to create custom AI assistants that perform a combination of intelligent functions.

The majority of products are considered out-of-the-box applications. They are embedded directly inside of CRM applications you use every day.

Salesforce Einstein Basics

Einstein Product Bundles

Salesforce intends to embed Einstein into all clouds. But for now, it is limited to a few. It’s offered in bundles and add-ons that include:

Einstein for Sales – Designed to help sales reps close deals faster by automating busy work, offering customer insights , analytics, and generating content, like customer emails. Lead and Opportunity scoring use predictive models for lead conversion and opportunity closure.

Einstein for Service – Improves customer service by offering recommendations, routing cases effectively, generating content like emails or service replies, and offering chatbots for customers 24/7. Additionally, Service Analytics offers pre-built dashboards displaying key performance indicators derived from service data.

Einstein for Marketing – Provides scoring tools for predicting customer engagement and optimal send times, along with Messaging Insights to monitor email activities. Copy insights aid in generating effective subject lines and content, while content tools facilitate testing to identify top-performing versions. Additionally, it offers email and web recommendations for personalized experiences and expands audiences through lookalike identification.

Einstein for Commerce – Personalizes the shopper experience with product and search recommendations, which can be displayed in designated slots on a commerce site. Additionally, it provides insights to merchandisers for optimizing storefronts.

Einstein for Analytics – Utilizes assets such as datasets, lenses, dashboards, and apps, which can be built and viewed using Analytics Studio. This enables the creation of rich interactive visualizations, while Einstein Discovery offers advanced analytics, including predictive models, to deliver insights and recommendations based on CRM data.

Einstein for Admins and Developers – Offers improved global search and generating code using natural language. Additionally, includes Vision and Language products for creating AI assistants, along with Prediction Builder for developing predictive models, such as predicting late payments from invoices and displaying results in list views and record pages.

Salesforce Einstein Pricing and Readiness Guide

Core Features

Most of the products included in the bundles are built using the following core features:

Prediction Models – Prediction models utilize machine learning to allow orgs to use data from the past to predict the future. Using a probability score value, these models can predict things like how likely it is that an invoice will be paid on time.

Recommendation Models – Machine learning is also used to recommend anything to employees and customers by connecting two Salesforce objects together. Recommendation models can then turn that recommendation into an action.

Natural Language Processing – Works by assigning labels to text. A machine learning model then learns the mapping between input and labels to predict the intent and sentiment of the input.

Chatbots – When created for customers, they can not only read the text input customers provide, but map this to a specific customer need, perform some action and return what the customer needs.

Classification –  Is an AI tool that is good for assigning labels to data. Einstein uses deep learning to predict what labels need to be assigned and can consume unstructured data, like a Case description or subject field.

Generative AI – Using many of the other core features and combined with a Large Language Model (LLM), Generative AI can respond to natural language questions or requests with responses resembling what a knowledgeable human would provide.

Trailhead on Getting Started with Artificial Intelligence

I will be adding more posts with information from the course, but if you want to check out the Pluralsight course and do not have a subscription, you can always sign up for a 10 day free trial.

Tips for passing Salesforce AI Associate exam

I just passed the Salesforce Certified AI Associate exam. The exam is only 40 questions and costs only $75 US Dollars, so why not?

Of all the Salesforce certification tests I have taken, this was honestly the easiest. But, you should still prepare. As long as you use this Trailhead Trailmix, you should be fine.

I went through the majority of the trailmix. The Modules are good, but I suggest studying these docs specifically:

Good luck as your prepare for the exam, but don’t think you need a data science degree or math training to do it. You don’t.

Preparing Now for AI in Salesforce

The big news at this year’s Dreamforce (2023) was the prominence of AI across the Salesforce platform. Generative AI is not new to Salesforce, but soon it will be baked into almost every product through the Einstein 1 Platform.

The core of this is the new Einstein One Copilot, which will function as a personal assistant in nearly all Salesforce apps including Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, Tableau, MuleSoft, and Canvas. At Dreamforce, Salesforce indicated that most Einstein One features will be generally available (GA) in the first quarter of 2024. Check out this link for a Salesforce cheat sheet on pricing and readiness guide.

But you don’t need to wait for 2024 to start planning. The time to start preparing for successful AI implementation is now. Proper planning and preparation is crucial for integrating AI in a way that augments human capabilities. Think of it as a journey that will require adjustments along the way.

The time to start preparing and designing a successful AI implementation is now.

So, what can you do know to prepare for this journey?

Step 1 – Learn more about Generative AI

Even if you use ChatGPT all the time, you need to learn more about Generative AI and all what all tools and capabilities are available or soon to be available in Salesforce. The best place to start is with Trailhead and the module about Generative AI Basics.

You may also want to check out Artificial Intelligence for Business. I have already gone through many modules myself and will recommend other relevant ones as I continue my own learning journey.

Consider becoming a Salesforce certified AI Associate. This means you are knowledgeable of basic AI concepts and Salesforce’s Core AI capabilities. To help you pass this exam, there is a Trailmix and a certification prep module.

Step 2 – Start Experimenting

Dive into the AI tools already available like the Einstein for Developers VS Code extension. Enable Einstein for Developers in your Winter 24 sandbox orgs.

If you work with large datasets and have access to an enterprise or unlimited edition, you can access a free tier of Data Cloud. Your AI use cases may demand connecting all your data into a single view for customers. One that takes into account historical data to make better predictions.

It may be necessary to use Data Cloud to connect and harmonize your data. You may even have to build tools to easily embed historical data into prompts. Access to the free tier should help you to get started.

More is coming in Spring ’24. I’ll report my findings here, so stay tuned!

I’m excited by Salesforce’s consistent AI infusion across apps. With mainstream ChatGPT adoption, the timing is perfect. The Salesforce platform is ideal for delivering AI capabilities to business users. Start preparing now to ensure your AI implementation succeeds.