Category: Ownership & Sharing
Ground Agentforce with data
Can AI become a trusted solution?
Sales and marketing teams need to connect with customers on a more individual level. But how can they possibly overcome this challenge without great cost and loss of time?
To overcome the problem, cutting-edge teams are finding ways to ground Salesforce Agentforce with data. This technology opens up doors for summarizing customer records, generating email messages and automating workflows.
Marc Benioff, Chair & CEO of Salesforce, warns that AI models are “very confident liars, producing misinformation and hallucinations”. Benioff suggested during a recent earnings call that “There’s a danger for companies, for enterprises, for our customers, that these are not trusted solutions”. Benioff made the point that generative AI requires a huge dataset, including metadata so the AI technology can understand and deliver critical insights and intelligence that customers need.
This blog post outlines how to effectively ground the Salesforce Agentforce with deep datasets and metadata. We will show you how to empower your team with trusted AI results to be used across marketing and sales. But first, let’s discuss the need for data.
How to ground Salesforce Agentforce with data
For Generative Artificial Intelligence to work, customer data must be grounded by datasets and metadata so AI models can generate trusted results.
Generative AI is only as powerful as the trusted and verified data you have access to in Salesforce. Creating useful email messages for new Leads with limited data is almost impossible. You must have access to a lot of data – deeply grounded datasets with metadata – before making attempts to use AI for marketing and sales.
Using Generative AI with limited and incorrect data will cause what’s called AI hallucinations. This is simply responses containing false and misleading information. Needless to say, this can lead to catastrophic results when it comes to customers trust in your brand.
This is where the RealZips GeoData Platform comes in. RealZips provides endless sources of verified and trusted data points for each Zip code. Every customer record in Salesforce is connected to RealZips, unlocking access to deeply grounded data.
Have a look at Zip code US-33178 in Miami (screenshot). As soon as you start feeding Agentforce with these datapoints, your team can produce meaningful AI results.
Agentforce becomes grounded with deep data from RealZips. The AI technology is fed with critical geographic data points, territory teams, and meaningful statistics.
The AI technology can now tap into demographic data, business performance, risk profiles, local incentives and even laws and regulations. Agentforce can easily be taught to reference the closest sales rep, brand store or service location by distance.
Generate a Lead Summary
Let’s say your team is selling hurricane protection for windows and doors. The Lead record below just came in from a web form. The Lead is automatically linked to Zip code US-33178 (shown above) so Agentforce can now intelligently merge data from different sources.
By combining datapoints from the Lead and the RealZips record, the “ReaZips Lead Summary” (below) was automatically generated by Agentforce in just seconds.
Your sales team is given an instant summary, making it possible to approach Scarlett with meaningful selling points. Notice how the AI technology generates highly valuable pointers based on local hurricane risk and crime composite. The closest location where Scarlett can visit for a product demo is automatically included:
Send personalized email to Leads
Thanks to the ReaZips Lead Summary generated above, your sales team now has a solid understanding for which hurricane protection products will be suitable for Scarlett.
It’s time to make the first reach-out. Let’s start with an introductory email to get the conversation going. This is how Agentforce generates a completely custom email message in just seconds based on trusted RealZips data:
Focus on customer experience
Email messages can now be generated based on reliable data for each Lead, their specific location and your own territory team. When you ground Agentforce with RealZips data your team will save large amounts of time by eliminating tedious research and endless email write-ups. Empowered with meaningful AI data – your sales team can build meaningful connections a large number of Leads – guiding them throughout the buying experience.
AI-enabled workflows
Your own customer data in Salesforce is the perfect starting point for introducing AI into your teams workflows. You can build automated processes such as ownership assignments, and appoint internal specialists to new customers. Agentforce can be used to assign the closest available service rep to a new Case. As soon as you combine Agentforce and RealZips, you’re opening up unlimited possibilities for your team to save time and serve customers even better. The video below even shows how it’s possible to create automated action plans for Opportunities.
Video demo – Generate AI Actions
Video demo showing in real-time how to use AI to summarize customer records and propose action plans. Scrub through the chapters and learn how to use AI for summarizing Lead records, create actions for thousands of Cases, and how to generate action plans for all Opportunities:
Learn more about Artificial Intelligence
The RealZips solution can be implemented now. You can deliver successful AI outcomes immediately. Start solving endless use cases, tapping into deep RealZips datasets. These are key articles to help start your AI projects:
Salesforce Press Release
- February 27, 2024: Einstein Copilot is Here: The Conversational AI Assistant for CRM that Delivers Trusted AI Responses Grounded with Your Company Data
Salesforce Blog Posts & News
- March 6, 2024: Einstein Copilot In-Depth: What It Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do
- February 29, 2024: Why Every AI Project Should Begin as a Data Project
RealZips Posts
- October 12, 2023: Prepare your Salesforce data for the AI revolution
- March 5, 2024: Improve your data in Salesforce with RealZips
- Integrate Market GeData & GeoData Insights with existing customer data
- Knowledge Article: How to configure Einstein Pilot with RealZips GeoData
Improve your customer data in Salesforce with RealZips
Why should you consider the RealZips app for Salesforce?
The RealZips GeoData Platform structures and organizes your customer data in Salesforce automatically, empowering your team to connect faster with the right customers in the right places.
Problem: Deterioration of customer data
Organizations are rapidly adding large amounts of customer data to Salesforce. As more data is added, the ability to search and report on customer data deteriorates.
Your customer data is becoming more and more disorganized over time, severely limiting your teams’ ability to run targeted marketing campaigns and focused sales activities. When consistent and structured geographic data is missing across records, your team can no longer use customer data efficiently.
Solution: Organize customer data geographically
The RealZips app provides a mission-critical geographic data structure for your customer data in Salesforce. Every record in Salesforce is automatically related to zip code or international postal code. Each zip code holds a wealth of deep geographic information, which automatically organizes and improves your entire customer database.
Your team will be able to instantly search and report across customers and territories, using endless geographical dimensions such as cities, counties, MSA Metros. Deep contextual data for each Zip code will guide your teams activities to the best possible geographic markets.
Tap into local market conditions with deep data
RealZips provides unlimited contextual market data, related to consumers, businesses, business risk, and other local conditions. You can automatically rank every Zip code based on market potential, and compare against your current sales performance.
Jurisdictions such as states, counties and cities often have a great impact on your ability to market and sell. Once you implement RealZips, your team can automatically categorize prospects based on state-based incentives, local laws and regulations, consumer and political preferences, climate conditions, crime risk and much more.
Implement distance zones for marketing, sales & support
Logistics is a key factor in your team’s ability to succeed, even if your team is working 100% remotely. For example, if a prospect is closer to a competitive location, your team is at an immediate disadvantage.
The RealZips app allows you to automatically organize all records in Salesforce by distance to your own locations and competitive outlets. Every customer record will be given a score based on competitive risk and serviceability. In turn, your team can now optimize marketing, sales and support activities based on distance zones.
Unlock Success: Data-driven territory management in Salesforce
A critical key to success for any organization is territory management; automatically assigning prospects and customers to territories and best-fit team members. Creating territories is a data-driven process, requiring robust geographic data, deep market data and your own sales data.
The RealZips app enables your team to use deep data for each zip code while creating and updating territories. Each Zip code can now be treated as a micro-market, comparing market potential against sales results.
Distance calculations are used to automatically predict your teams ability to serve customers in the Zip code. Every Zip code can be served by multiple territories, efficiently managed by the RealZips app.
Which organizations benefit from RealZips?
Organizations with many records in Salesforce will enjoy instant business value from RealZips. If your Salesforce database is burdened with legacy automation (old workflows, process builders, custom APEX) you will rapidly benefit from RealZips, using out-of-box RealZips automation.
RealZips GeoData is proven to empower organizations across all industries, ranging from non-profits to the financial industry. The more data you are managing in Salesforce, the faster you will achieve business value from RealZips.
Organizations that must focus on geographic areas with the highest sales potential (not having an unlimited marketing and sales budget) are very likely to get in touch with more prospects and close more opportunities shortly after implementing RealZips.
Answer these 8 questions and learn if you need RealZips
If you are getting more than three “Yes” responses, you and your team will benefit from adding RealZips GeoData to your Salesforce customer data:
- Is your Salesforce customer data missing geographic data points?
- Does every customer have critical territory team assignments, and distance to closest team member?
- Can you drill-down into customer data across regions, territories, state, counties and MSA metros, and cities?
- Is lead routing already an issue, with hard-to-manage rules and overlapping automation?
- Are you running out of Salesforce Enterprise Management Hierarchies and Territory Assignment Filters?
- Does your Salesforce Org have complex automation for sharing rules, ownership rules and territories?
- Does your marketing team struggle to run campaigns by metropolitan areas and travel distance to venues?
- Does the sales team miss data on where to focus their sales activities, based on local market potential?
How soon should I expect results from RealZips?
The RealZips app can be up and running rapidly. Oftentimes the customer data can be automatically structured into geographic areas and territories on the first day for implementation.
Depending on your Salesforce ORG’s complexity, the RealZips time to value usually varies between immediate value and up to a few weeks to be fully implemented.
What will the RealZips team bring to the table?
Consider the RealZips team your trusted partner in unlocking your team’s sales success. We have 30+ years of experience from global CRM implementations, across most industries.
5 reasons to add RealZips to your Salesforce ORG
RealZips is a data-driven territory management app for Salesforce. RealZips automatically organizes and enriches global customer data records in Salesforce.
Use cases for RealZips range across all industries. The reasons for implementing RealZips are surprisingly similar across different organizations.
These are five common challenges that RealZips will address, enabling you to deliver a better Salesforce User Experience:
- Data Enrichment
- Territory Management
- Actionable Market Data
- Salesforce Automation
- Customer Focus
RealZips is designed to help your team save time and connect faster with customers. Let’s have a look at how you can solve these 5 challenges by implementing RealZips:
1. Data Enrichment
Lack of data points across your Salesforce records cause endless problems and inefficiencies.
Marketing can not effectively segment leads or run marketing campaigns in best-fit geographic areas. Sales can not automatically assign prospects and customers to the right sales resource. Assignments of Cases are delayed, creating friction with your customers.
The Zip code and Country fields on your Salesforce records are used to automatically relate endless data points from RealZips app.
For example, all customer records can instantly be enriched with data points such as city, county, state, MSA metro, time zone, sales team, closest store, and more.
Data enrichment unlocks new ways for marketing, sales and operations to better serve customers.
These are examples of what you will be able to do with RealZips:
- Add time zones to all records in Salesforce, so your team can time mailers better and schedule outbound calls at the best possible moment.
- Activate County and MSA Metropolitan data points, allowing you to automatically group prospects into manageable sub-territories. Your team can now run perfectly targeted marketing campaigns and sales activities.
- Set up automatic Drive Zones around sales and service team members, organizing customers records by distance. Enable your teams to maximize time with customers.
2. Territory Management
It’s virtually impossible to provide your team with a scalable Territory Management solution, complete with interactive maps, dashboards, and integrated reports.
The standard Salesforce Enterprise Territory Management (ETM) does not support granular territory management on a Zip code level. Most organizations therefore struggle to manage smaller geographic territories, that divide states and cities. Overlapping territories is another major challenge, as territories are stacked on top of different sales teams, service teams and channel partners.
Home-grown workarounds for Territory Management quickly become confusing and impossible to manage. For example, sales teams must oftentimes use multiple dashboards, reports and links to mapping tools to understand the geographic assignment and ownership of customer records. Salesforce Admins are then forced to build a dizzying array of automation for owner assignment and Sharing Rules.
RealZips is designed to deliver a data-driven, reliable and scalable solution for Territory Management.
RealZips provides a platform for territory management, completely integrated with global customer data in Salesforce:
- Out-of-box Territory Dashboards for immediate rollout
- Territory assignment templates for instant territories
- Management of overlapping territories across the world
- Map components for any Salesforce page
- Sales team management and ownership automation
- Rules-based territory teams, displayed on Salesforce pages
3. Actionable Market Data
Market data outside of Salesforce is very important, providing insights for strategic planning of marketing and sales teams. Stand-alone market data can range across demographics, consumer behavior, corporate data, regional incentives, local risk exposure and more. The problem is… it’s outside of Salesforce!
The day you start moving market data metrics into Salesforce – combined with existing customer data – is the day you’re creating a substantial competitive advantage for your team.
Market data provides a framework for where to engage in marketing campaigns and sales activities, once the data is in Salesforce. The RealZips app was designed to blend your own customer data with deep market data.
Samples of Zip codes based demographic datasets, available in the RealDatasets.com store. These datasets can rapidly be uploaded into RealZips and integrated with existing records in Salesforce:
RealZips automatically combines customer data and market data, ranking geographic areas and customers based on local market conditions. For example, all prospective customers can be flagged for local incentives, changes in real estate value, or demand for product and services.
Market data in Salesforce opens up endless possibilities to understand each customer’s local market conditions.
The RealZips app makes it easy to add actionable market data of any type to Salesforce. Here are a just a few examples:
The market data you choose to add, can immediately be added to existing customers records. Prospects and customers will automatically be ranked based on market conditions, distance to sales and service locations, and much more.
Market data in RealZips sets a framework for automating processes, and allowing your team to make instant decisions across territory design, marketing campaigns, and daily sales activities.
4. Salesforce Automation
Trying to automate business processes in Salesforce with missing and incorrect data is a tremendous challenge.
Most attempts to automate processes will be limited to the quality of your existing data.
The Salesforce Cloud has fantastic capabilities when it comes to automation, especially when using Lightning Flows.
However – without useful data points to use in the automation process and logic – you can not make full use of Salesforce Automation capabilities.
RealZips takes your automation and Lightning Flows to new level :
- Automate assignment of leads by combining territory information, geographic data and market data.
- Configure flexible rules-based sharing of accounts, contacts, opportunities and cases.
- Create assignment logic based on distance zones, applicable to stores, service locations, and sales team members.
- Geographic markers such as County, MSA Metro, Territory and more can be used in your automation logic in virtually unlimited ways to speed up your teams’ workflows.
RealZips provides built-in features for lead routing and ownership assignment, used by large global organizations to keep massive amounts of records assigned to the right team members.
5. Customer Focus
The RealZips app and data was designed to empower your team to focus on the right customers, in the right places, at the right time.
How RealZips unlocks your team’s customer-first focus:
- RealZips GeoData organizes your customer data into a geographic framework.
- RealZips Territories makes it possible to roll out a powerful global assignment of internal resources.
- Market Data provides local market conditions, used to drive marketing, sales and support activities.
Salesforce Automation enriched with RealZips makes it possible to build meaningful workflows that help your team focus on what matters most: Customers.