From price hikes to new partner programs, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Salesforce Cloud CRM Prices Set to Soar
Salesforce will hike up prices for several of its cloud and marketing tools next month for the first time since 2016.
The impacted solutions include its Service, Sales, and Marketing Cloud platforms, alongside Tableau and Industries.
On average, the total price increase – across these products – is nine percent.
However, Salesforce has so far only revealed the new prices of its Service and Sales Cloud platforms – as shared below:
- Salesforce Professional Edition from US$ 75 to US$ 80 (up $5)
- Salesforce Enterprise Edition from US$ 150 to US$ 165 (up $15)
- Salesforce Unlimited Edition from US$ 300 to $330 (up $30)
While the move will displease customers, it comes at a time when Salesforce – and its competitors – and pumping more money into augmenting their solutions with generative AI (GenAI).
Giving his take on LinkedIn, Daniel Newman, CEO of the Futurum Group, stated:
In #SaaS, continued innovation and development comes at a cost. Salesforce has frozen prices for some time. My take is the #AI investment required to stay competitive will drive price and capabilities for CRM.
Indeed, over the past seven years, Salesforce has invested over $20BN in R&D, driving new features and offerings without raising its prices.
The Contact Center Genie is an excellent example, as is its now fully-integrated Lightning Platform, embedded Einstein AI, Flows, native Slack apps, DevOps Center, and more. (Read on…).
AWS Augments Contact Centers with Generative AI
AWS has infused its Contact Center Intelligence (CCI) suite with generative AI (GenAI).
While many will be more familiar with its Amazon Connect CCaaS platform, AWS provides the CCI suite to add AI and machine learning (ML) to third-party contact center platforms.
Amongst others, these third-party solutions include Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, and Talkdesk.
In augmenting these platforms, AWS delivers agent-assist, call analytics, and self-service virtual agent capabilities to end-users.
Now, AWS has laced these solutions with GenAI. The following demo from Dr. Andrew Kane, Principal Solutions Architect at AWS, highlights how.
During the demo, Kane notes the additional benefits GenAI delivers as part of the CCI suite:
- Improved call handling accuracy with faster contact resolution
- Script compliance checks and agent scoring
- Task automation that drives cost reduction
- A greater understanding of complex, natural language queries
- Conversational, accurate responses from trusted sources
- Abstractive call summarization
- Lower agent churn
Continue for further guidance on how it drives these outcomes after an intro into how AWS has embedded GenAI into its CCI suite. (Read on…).
8×8 Launches New Partner Program with CX at Its Core
8×8 has unveiled its new partner program that aims to improve customer experiences with AI, insights, and analytics.
The 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem, as it is called, optimizes customer experiences and engagement through the democratization of native integrations for any sized business.
