Salesforce Rolled Out Generative AI In Slack For Customers

Recently, Salesforce announced the general availability of Slack AI, a trusted and reliable experience built on Generative AI for Slack, the most popular workplace communication channel. Through AI-powered search, channel recap, and thread summaries, customers can quickly get their hands on collectively shareable knowledge via guided experiences over Slack. These capabilities empower customers to look for relevant answers and refine and utilize shared knowledge.

What makes it significant?

As per Gartner, approximately half of digital workers are unsatisfied with information overload, struggling to find what they need to be productive. Coupled with the ever-expanding array of tools and communication channels, this creates a cognitive burden that makes it challenging to stay ahead of the curve and feel in control. Artificial intelligence is the only hope with endless potential to convert internal knowledge into highly relevant, contextual, and easy-to-find resources.

Slack CEO Denise Dresser said, “For the past decade, Slack has revolutionized the way we work, bringing people, apps, and systems together in one place.” “With Slack AI, we’re excited to take this transformation to the next level. These new AI capabilities empower our customers to access the collective knowledge within Slack to work smarter, move faster, and spend their time on things that spark real innovation and growth. In the era of generative AI, Slack is the trusted, conversational platform that connects every part of a business to supercharge team productivity.”

What is Generative AI in Slack Or Slack AI?

With Slack AI, customers can easily find and utilize knowledge in bulk, too, in very little time. These features offer several key advantages:

• Intuitive and Trustworthy: No prior training is required; simply engage in natural, guided interactions to utilize the functionalities. Customers can expect delivery of reliable results with 100% security, ensuring accuracy and peace of mind.
• Personalized and Secure: Each output is tailored to the specific user, presenting relevant summaries and answers. Additionally, all findings are securely sourced and documented, maintaining transparency and compliance.

With Slack AI, customers can access:

1. Personalized AI-powered search:
This feature enables users to give prompt conversationally and get relevant answers based on shared knowledge on Slack messages. It quickly discovers vital information, details on a marketing campaign, company policy, historical context for past decisions, or clarification of acronyms.

2. Channel recaps from accessible channels:
As a Slack AI User, you can pick on all missed conversations, get a 7-day summary or can, catch up on unread messages, summarize the last seven days, or custom-select a date range for a focused overview. This empowers them to reintegrate after time away quickly, dive into new projects, or seamlessly join time-sensitive discussions.

3. Thread summaries for slashing down long conversations:
Slack AI lets you get the essence of complicated conversations in just a click. Explicit source references within summaries allow for a deeper exploration of specific highlights. This enables users to grasp vital decisions instantly and the next steps, understand customer support tickets and gain a bird’s-eye view of team priorities through stand-up summaries.

A recent pilot program showed that users saved an average of 97 minutes per week using Slack’s AI-powered features. That’s nearly 2 hours freed up for more strategic and impactful work.

Generative AI in Slack For Sales Team

Modern sales teams face mounting pressure to optimize workflows and bolster team performance. Slack AI empowers sales representatives with the ability to:

• Seamlessly identify and integrate relevant subject matter experts into the sales cycle, ensuring customers receive timely and accurate responses to specific inquiries or concerns.
• Obtain concise summaries of account channels, enabling them to enter client meetings with a comprehensive understanding of the context and critical points.
• Automatically generate summaries of lengthy deal progress discussions, fostering improved team alignment and ensuring everyone remains informed.

How Slack AI Establishes Balance Between Security & Trust For Customers?

It all narrows down to trust when we mention Salesforce, and being part of the Salesforce product family, Slack is also aimed at building artificial intelligence threads based on safety, responsibility, and ethics.

Slack AI operates entirely within Slack’s secure infrastructure, adhering to the same rigorous security practices and compliance standards customers rely on. This ensures that large language models (LLMs) are hosted directly within your organization’s environment, guaranteeing that your data remains confidential and is used solely for your authorized purposes. Data remains isolated and is not utilized for training purposes or to serve other clients.

What’s ahead in the future of Generative AI in Slack

The constant innovation in Generative AI is bringing more exciting possibilities to the future of Slack. The following vital advancements are projected:

1. Information at Your Fingertips: Summarization and Prioritization
This add-on will enable users to stay seamlessly informed on crucial conversations without sacrificing focus on immediate tasks. Soon, Slack’s AI will generate digests, summarizing key points from channels you follow but don’t actively engage in. This will empower you to efficiently catch up on noteworthy information while prioritizing your current workload.

2. Data-Driven Insights: Salesforce Integration with Einstein Copilot
A native AI integration with Einstein Copilot, a conversational AI assistant powered by Salesforce CRM, is currently under development. This integration will enable you to seamlessly access customer data and receive relevant answers to your queries directly within the Slack interface. Imagine gaining insightful answers without switching applications, streamlining your workflow, and enhancing decision-making.

3. Beyond Search and Summarization: Shaping the Future of Work
These advancements are just mere starters to the transformative potential of generative AI in Slack. The platform envisions evolving into a central hub for work, acting as the intuitive conversational interface for productive AI applications. This future holds immense potential for boosting collaboration, accelerating information flow, and fostering a more efficient work environment.

Slack AI General Availability & Pricing

Slack AI is now generally available to boost the overall productivity of teams within the Slack platform, endorsed with the power of Generative AI experiences. As a paid add-on for Enterprise plans, Slack AI harnesses the collective knowledge within your organization to empower users with:

Currently available in US and UK English, Slack AI will soon expand to additional plans and languages. Further, explore the wealth of AI-powered partner apps already available in the Slack App Directory to enhance your team’s capabilities.

Final Take

Slack just got smarter! Integrating generative AI directly into team workflows opens doors to enhanced productivity and streamlined communication. This pilot program demonstrates the power of AI in delivering instant, personalized assistance within existing platforms like Slack. Ultimately, our goal is to empower teams by simplifying tasks and maximizing efficiency, even if it means taking collaboration to the next level with the help of AI.