The role of customer data in unlocking AI's full potential: Highlights from Dreamforce 2024

Salesforce's annual event, Dreamforce, has grown into the world's largest artificial intelligence event, attracting professionals globally to explore the latest advancements in technology and business.

This year, AI's transformative potential in sales, marketing, and customer service took centre stage. But before companies can fully harness AI, a critical prerequisite often goes overlooked: clean and enriched customer data.

High-quality customer data is essential

The true power of AI lies in its ability to leverage data for informed decision-making. At Columbia Road, we've seen many companies struggle to realise AI's potential due to issues with their customer data. Whether in B2B or B2C, successful AI integration requires individualised, clean, and enriched data. Companies that fail to track or recognise their customer base in digital interactions miss out on AI's full capabilities.

For instance, in ecommerce, many businesses have already automated thousands of personalised customer journeys using algorithms, leading to significant commercial results and an enhanced customer experience. However, larger corporations without sufficient data infrastructure need executive-level commitment to improve both the quality and quantity of customer data to achieve similar outcomes.

The question remains: when will companies recognise data as a measurable and actionable strategic asset?

Salesforce's vision for AI as your work companion

At Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce emphasised its vision for the future of AI. Marc Benioff, the CEO and co-founder, painted a compelling picture of AI acting as a colleague or coach for employees in sales, marketing, and customer service. The newly introduced Agentforce is designed to facilitate seamless collaboration between humans and AI. Salesforce’s ultimate goal? To empower workers to be more efficient and effective by integrating AI into their daily routines.

The concept of humans working alongside digital agents, such as a personal AI assistant that helps analyse sales trends or manage customer interactions, no longer seems like science fiction. In fact, the Agentforce slogan, “Humans with agents drive customer success together,” could very well become the future norm.

The real-world impact of Agentforce

As we anticipated after last year's Dreamforce event, the pioneering companies are now using AI in ways that were still emerging back then, and generative AI has become an integral part of Salesforce's tools. At this year's Dreamforce, we saw real-life examples of Agentforce in action. Early-adopting businesses reported up to 25% more efficiency in manual tasks and a 15% increase in revenue due to automated lead qualification and campaign optimisation.

Here are some of the use cases we explored at the event:

• Sales development representative (SDR) agent: A digital assistant that nurtures leads, validates opportunities, and schedules meetings independently. For example, imagine receiving a timely Slack message from your agent saying, “It’s time to call customer X about topic Y. Would you like me to draft the message for you?”
• Customer service agent: More than just a chatbot, this agent resolves service cases autonomously, enhancing response times and overall customer satisfaction.
• Campaign manager agent: Automates the entire marketing campaign process, from design to execution, while offering real-time metrics and future campaign suggestions.

These AI-driven agents streamline workflows, allowing human experts to focus on more complex, value-adding tasks.

The real-world impact of AgentforcAI AND DATA: THE ROAD AHEAD

All the presentations, demos, and discussions at Dreamforce 2024 emphasised one undeniable truth: Salesforce users cannot fully benefit from innovations such as Agentforce, automated workflows, or personalised customer experiences without the backbone of Salesforce's Data Cloud. To harness AI’s potential, businesses must prioritise building a rich and well-structured customer data architecture. Based on our experiences, this is particularly relevant for Nordic companies, whose journey toward a data-driven future is often still mainly in its early stages.

The message is clear: customer data is no longer just a byproduct of business processes; it’s the foundation upon which future AI-driven success will be built.

At Columbia Road, we see this as an exciting opportunity to empower our clients to enrich their customer data and implement AI solutions like Agentforce, helping them unlock their growth potential and achieve business goals. 

PREPARING FOR AN AI-ENHANCED FUTURE

As AI becomes more integrated into business operations, it will shift from being merely a tool to becoming a true team member. The key question for businesses is how they can effectively integrate AI-driven agents into their teams and workflows to maximise value.

One challenge discussed at Dreamforce was how AI’s growing role in automating tasks might affect the development of junior employees. Traditionally, entry-level roles like Sales Development Representative (SDR) have been seen as stepping stones in a career path, but with AI taking over simpler tasks, how will the next generation of workers acquire essential skills?

While this presents challenges, it also opens doors for employees to develop more advanced digital skills. As AI adoption grows, digital fluency will become an even more critical asset in sales, marketing, and customer service. The next wave of professionals must be prepared to configure and collaborate with AI agents, making technical skills more valuable than ever.

At Columbia Road, we're already seeing this shift in the talent market and have noticed a growing demand for full-stack marketers and AI consultants who can help bridge the gap between technology and business.

FINAL THOUGHTS: INVESTING IN DATA AND AI FOR FUTURE SUCCESS

Dreamforce 2024 provided much food for thought, especially regarding the integration of AI in daily business operations. As we move forward, companies that invest in their data infrastructure and AI capabilities will be the ones best positioned for success in the coming years.

If any of these topics resonate with you, or if your organisation is facing some of the challenges mentioned – drop us a line; we're here to help.