We love it when people exceed expectations. Whether it's an athlete who steps up to replace an injured starter or a team that pulls together to deliver exceptional results, it is inspiring to see long-held assumptions about potential turned upside down. Now, service organizations have an opportunity to exceed traditional expectations in the same way. Instead of being considered simply a means of connection and cost containment post-customer purchase, intelligent service teams can become a strategic driver to direct value back to the business. Focusing on speed, insights, and accuracy, SAP Service Cloud resolves customer issues at unmatched speed -- protecting the brands promise and securing future growth.

In the run up to Dreamforce 2021 in September, Salesforce announced new capabilities for Einstein Automate as well as new AI-driven workflows and RPA capabilities for Service Cloud . Prior to Dreamforce 2021, I had a chance to talk with Clara Shih, CEO of Service Cloud at Salesforce, about how the cloud-based software company sees automation and AI transforming, and actually humanizing, customer service. The following is a transcript of our interview, edited for readability. So let's talk automation, AI, RPA and how that relates to the Service Cloud and how that's kind of changing how organizations approach their interactions with their customers. Because I know that automation is a large part of many organization's digital transformation processes.

It can be a full-time job trying to keep up with Salesforce's newest cloud offerings and messaging. However, it is always worth the effort, because the company's pronouncements are often early bellwethers of the future direction of the software industry. This has become particularly true with respect to the company's evolving efforts to penetrate and gain a prominent position in the artificial intelligence and Internet of Things markets. Salesforce's most recent moves, in anticipation of its annual Dreamforce conference, also could be a key indicator of the rapidly changing competitive landscape. Salesforce has been in the vanguard of promoting Software as a Service and, more broadly, the value of the cloud.

Jetstar is looking to artificial intelligence to boost its ability to provide "smart service" to customers and differentiate in Asia's increasingly congested low-cost carrier market. A demonstration at Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco revealed a smart service platform powered by Salesforce and IBM, using both vendors' respective AI technologies Einstein and Watson. There is some ambiguity over how much of what was shown in the presentation is in production use. Salesforce's managing director for global go-to-market strategy and execution in the vendor's travel, transportation and hospitality segments, Farhan Mohammad, called it "a demonstration of how Jetstar is using Salesforce". Jetstar's head of digital Cathryn Arnold indicated to iTnews following the presentation that the IBM Watson tie-ins were "aspirational" and not yet in production.

Einstein Vision for Field Service uses deep learning to help field service agents. Salesforce on Wednesday announced a series of new AI-powered tools designed for mobile workers. The enhancements to Field Service Lightning -- a platform that enables workers to respond to customer service calls and engage with customers on site -- cover three areas: image recognition, equipment management and analytics. The first new feature, Einstein Vision for Field Service, uses deep learning to help field service agents. Companies can use pre-trained image classifiers or train their own classifiers to handle various, specialized image recognition use cases.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on March 6, 2017. Given how much several tech giants throw around the terms "artificial intelligence," "machine learning" and "deep learning," it's easy to assume that they're all trying to do similar things. And in some cases, the companies are indeed using AI to tackle problems that have much in common, particularly when it comes to making sense out of real-life sounds, images and dialogue. But a closer look shows that tech giants are at times not only tackling very different challenges, but employing different AI techniques to do so. IBM (IBM), which has reportedly set a goal of obtaining $10 billion in annual revenue related to its Watson AI platform by 2023, is a particular outlier -- not seen as a leader when it comes to certain large-scale, consumer-focused AI solutions, but very much one when it comes to AI offerings that require a measure of industry-specific expertise.

Given how much several tech giants throw around the terms "artificial intelligence," "machine learning" and "deep learning," it's easy to assume that they're all trying to do similar things. And in some cases, the companies are indeed using AI to tackle problems that have much in common, particularly when it comes to making sense out of real-life sounds, images and dialogue. But a closer look shows that tech giants are at times not only tackling very different challenges, but employing different AI techniques to do so. IBM (IBM), which has set a goal of obtaining $10 billion in annual revenue related to its Watson AI platform by 2023, is especially an outlier -- not seen as a leader when it comes to certain large-scale, consumer-focused AI solutions, but very much one when it comes to AI offerings that require a measure of industry-specific expertise. The companies plan to pair Watson's ability to make sense out of data unique to fields such as health care, retail and financial services with Salesforce's Einstein AI platform -- it relies on the data taken in by Salesforce apps -- to deliver industry-specific insights, predictions and recommendations that can be useful for customer interactions. One such example given by the companies: By having Salesforce's Marketing Cloud apps plug into Watson programming interfaces (APIs), weather, local shopping and retail industry data analyzed by Watson could be paired with customer-specific shopping data analyzed by Einstein to "send highly personalized and localized email campaigns to shoppers."

CRM company Salesforce, powered by the artificial intelligence of Einstein, is making additional in-roads into the contact center. Salesforce today unveiled Salesforce Einstein, which is being described as not only providing artificial intelligence for every company, but as creating the world's smartest customer relationship management (CRM) software. Whenever I cover a vendor announcement on No Jitter, one of my goals is to deliver value beyond the press release. And after listening to an hour long pre-briefing for press and analysts on the announcement last week, I was eager to get to work on coverage... Then I saw the press release. In 1,600 words, the Salesforce team has done an impressive job of laying out the Einstein vision and story.

Salesforce is announcing today the launch of its Einstein artificial intelligence (A.I.) platform that's implemented into several of the company's existing cloud services: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Community Cloud, and IoT Cloud. The company is also announcing the formation of Salesforce Research, a unit that will do research in deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision that can be used to improve Salesforce products. The unit is led by Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher, formerly cofounder and chief executive of A.I. startup MetaMind, which Salesforce acquired earlier this year. In a press briefing in San Francisco this week, Socher declined to say how many people were part of the team, although he did say that some of Salesforce's 175 data scientists have joined the newly organized division. The product enhancements will have an impact on Salesforce's direct competitors.

Can you believe it, we are only a little over a month away from Dreamforce'16, which is lining up to be even bigger than last year when Salesforce reported over 160,000 registered attendees! Whether you plan to attend or catch some of Dreamforce online, there is undoubtedly a depth and breadth of topics, sessions and keynotes to interest anyone, in any role, in any industry. But with so much you could focus on, how do you decide? At NeuraFlash, we are expert implementers and a Consulting Partner focused on Salesforce and A.I. We are interested in areas of Advanced Intelligence combined with Salesforce. While creating the best customer and employee experiences possible, we aim to make Salesforce users more efficient, capitalize on opportunities and get the most business value from the data captured through Salesforce.