Salesforce takes AWS relationship to the next level

Salesforce has shone the spotlight on the importance of partnerships for enhancing customer service during the first day of its annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco.

"We have partnered with all of the other major companies," co-founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff told attendees during his opening keynote.

"We realise you do have more than Salesforce. We will not create boundaries between us. We will operate as one community."

At the same time, as further evidence and recognition of the importance of working with the right partners, the cloud giant confirmed it is expanding its existing partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“We have an inclusive partnership strategy at Salesforce. We talk a lot about listening to our customers, but we have to think through what they’re saying. Having an inclusive partnership strategy is very important [to that],” said Ryan Aytay, Co-CEO of Quip and Salesforce’s executive vice president of strategic partnerships.

“Companies are making this big bet and spending a lot of money bringing workloads to [public] cloud. Salesforce is the world’s number one CRM and we need to be unified with a public cloud provider. That is a part of our strategy.

“This is a partnership we’ve been talking about for a while. It’s the world’s number one CRM with world’s number one cloud provider.”

The newest element of the pre-existing alliance will see Amazon Connect integrated with Service Cloud, resulting in something dubbed Service Cloud Voice, which will ensure call centre operatives have the best tools at their disposal to deliver a polished customer experience.

What’s more, by ensuring agents have access to all the information they need at their fingertips, rather than having to visit multiple sources, organisations will be able to increase satisfaction while also reducing costs.

AI-powered speech analytics – in preferred languages – will also be provided through Amazon Connect directly to call centre workers to further assist them in answering customer enquiries expertly and efficiently.

“We have an inclusive partnership strategy. This is very important when you put the customer at the centre,” added Sarah Franklin, executive vice president and general manger of platform for Trailhead and developers at Salesforce.

Other strands of the extended partnership include the availability of AWS educational content on Trailhead and the exploration of ways to make Einstein Voice Skills compatible with Alexa and other smart speakers and assistants.

“At John Hancock we are focused on making decisions easier and lives better for our customers, and part of how we achieve this mission is through our interactions with them in the contact center,” said Tracy Kelly, AVP of Shared Services Contact Centre at John Hancock.

“With the integrated Salesforce Service Cloud and Amazon Connect solution we can handle millions of calls annually, delivering the personalised and frictionless service our customers expect.”

Both Amazon and Salesforce, along with other industry players, are part of the Voice Interoperability Initiative, which aims to make use of voice-enabled products to deliver greater choice and flexibility through the use of interoperable voice services.