Get to know Einstein Copilot: A practical guide for 2025

Let's be honest, the buzz around generative AI inside your CRM is pretty hard to miss. Every platform is rushing to add a smart assistant, and Salesforce's big play is Einstein Copilot. The promise sounds great: an AI that’s deeply plugged into your business, answers questions using your own data, and helps your team get more done, all within Salesforce.

But what does it actually take to get value out of it? This guide is here to give you a straightforward look at what Einstein Copilot is, how it works, what the setup is really like, and its biggest drawbacks. By the end, you should have a much clearer idea of whether it’s the right move for your team or if a more flexible option makes more sense.

What is Salesforce Einstein Copilot?

Salesforce Einstein Copilot is a conversational AI assistant built right into the Salesforce platform. You can think of it as a chatbot that has an advanced degree in your company’s customer data.

A screenshot of the official Salesforce Einstein Copilot landing page to introduce the tool. Get to know Einstein Copilot from the source.

Its main job is to use your organization's own information, from account histories and service cases to marketing campaigns, to answer questions, summarize records, write things like emails, and automate tasks that have multiple steps.

What makes it different from a general-purpose tool like ChatGPT is that it’s grounded in your own trusted data. It uses the Salesforce Data Cloud, which means its answers are supposed to come from your specific business context, not just what it can find on the public internet. It's built for sales, service, marketing, and commerce teams who spend their days working inside Salesforce.

How Einstein Copilot works

To really get to know Einstein Copilot, you have to peek under the hood. It’s more than just a chat window on top of your CRM. Its capabilities come from three main components working together.

1. Data Cloud: This is the brain of the operation. Data Cloud is Salesforce’s hub for bringing all your customer data together. It connects structured info (like contacts and opportunities) with unstructured data (like PDFs or call transcripts), even pulling from external sources like Snowflake to create a single customer profile. This gives the Copilot the context it needs to be helpful. Without it, the AI is just taking a shot in the dark.

2. Actions: These are the hands. Actions are the specific jobs the Copilot can do. Salesforce comes with standard, out-of-the-box actions like "Summarize Record" or "Draft an Email." The real potential, though, comes from creating custom actions that let the Copilot do things unique to your business, like "Check the shipping status in our logistics system."

3. Topics & The Supervisor Model: This is the manager. Einstein Copilot uses a setup that acts like a supervisor. When you ask it for something, the main Copilot doesn't try to do everything itself. Instead, it figures out what you want and passes the request to the right "Topic." A Topic is like a specialized mini-agent with its own set of instructions and a limited list of Actions for a specific job (like "Account Management" or "Case Resolution"). That specialist handles the task and sends back the answer.

This setup is definitely powerful, but it also shows where the complexity kicks in. Building custom actions and setting up new topics isn't a simple point-and-click affair. It usually requires some real technical know-how, a deep understanding of Salesforce, and maybe even a developer's time using tools like Apex and Flows.

Key features and use cases

So, what can you actually do with it day-to-day? Here’s a look at how different teams might use Einstein Copilot’s built-in abilities.

For sales teams

Sales reps can use the Copilot to handle repetitive work and find info without having to dig through a bunch of records.

• Automating tasks: You can ask it to write personalized outreach emails based on a lead’s history, summarize the key points and tone from a recorded sales call, or draft a closing plan for a specific deal.

• Managing records: Instead of building reports, you can ask questions in plain English like, "Show me my top open deals in the manufacturing industry" or "Summarize the key activity on the ACME account over the last month."

For service teams

For support agents, the main goal is to solve customer issues faster and cut down on manual data entry.

• Solving cases: The Copilot can instantly search your knowledge base for relevant articles, summarize a long and complicated case history for an agent who's just been handed a ticket, and draft empathetic replies to customers.

• Automating workflows: It can take care of post-call wrap-up, create follow-up tasks for teammates, and even escalate high-priority cases based on what's said in a conversation.

For marketing and commerce teams

These teams can lean on the Copilot to create content and personalize customer experiences.

• Creating content: It can help with first drafts of marketing campaign briefs, generate unique product descriptions for an e-commerce store, and even build simple landing pages.

• Adding a personal touch: It can help merchants set up their digital storefronts or create targeted promotions based on customer segments you've already defined in the Data Cloud.

The catch with customization

Salesforce gives you the Einstein 1 Studio, which includes tools like the Copilot Builder and Prompt Builder, to tailor these features to your business. You can create custom prompts or chain actions together to build unique workflows.

But this is often where the ease of use stops. Building and testing custom prompts and actions that actually work for your specific processes takes a serious time commitment from a Salesforce admin or developer. It's not really a self-serve tool for teams that need to be nimble.

This is a big difference from more agile solutions. A platform like eesel AI, for example, offers a workflow engine that’s truly self-serve. You can get started in a few minutes, and non-technical folks can easily define the AI’s persona, tell it which knowledge sources to use, and create custom actions without getting stuck in a month-long development project.

A look at the self-serve customization and workflow action screen in eesel AI, an important point as you get to know Einstein Copilot alternatives.

The reality: Implementation, pricing, and limitations

Features are only one piece of the puzzle. To fully get to know Einstein Copilot, you have to understand the real-world cost, the effort it takes to get it running, and where it falls short.

Salesforce Einstein Copilot pricing

Einstein Copilot isn’t a product you can just buy off the shelf. It’s bundled into the high-end Einstein 1 Editions of Salesforce or sold as an expensive add-on to the already pricey Enterprise and Unlimited Editions. Getting access is a major financial commitment.

Note: Pricing is based on Salesforce's public information and can change.

The steep per-user cost can make your budget unpredictable and expensive as you grow. This is something to watch out for. Many companies prefer the clearer pricing of a platform like eesel AI, which bases plans on overall usage, not how many seats you have. You don't get hit with a surprise bill just because your team had a busy month.

The eesel AI pricing page, which shows clear, public-facing costs, which helps as you get to know Einstein Copilot pricing which can be more complex.

The setup process

Getting started with Einstein Copilot is a job for an admin, and it can take weeks, if not months. Here’s what it typically looks like:

1. Buy it: First, you have to be on the right Salesforce plan or purchase the right add-on.

2. Turn it on: A system admin has to go into the Setup menu and enable Generative AI for the whole company.

3. Assign permissions: Specific permission sets have to be carefully given to admins and the end-users who will actually use the Copilot.

4. Configure it: Using the Copilot Builder, an admin has to review and decide which standard actions to enable or disable for the Copilot.

5. Customize it (the hard part): For anything specific to your business, you'll have to use the Prompt Builder and possibly developer tools like Apex or Flows to create, test, and roll out custom actions.

The bottom line is that this isn't a tool you can test drive and launch in an afternoon. In contrast, eesel AI is built for speed, with one-click helpdesk integrations that let you go live in minutes, not months, completely on your own.

The biggest limitation: Trapped in the Salesforce ecosystem

Einstein Copilot is built to work best with data that's already inside or connected to the Salesforce ecosystem. For most companies, this is a huge hurdle.

Just ask yourself: where does your team's most valuable knowledge actually live? Is it all neatly tucked away in Salesforce? Or is it spread out across Confluence, Google Docs, Slack, or other helpdesks like Zendesk or Intercom? Getting all those external sources into the Salesforce Data Cloud can be a complicated and expensive project all on its own. This is exactly the problem eesel AI was designed to solve, by instantly and securely connecting all your scattered knowledge without a massive data migration project.

An infographic showing how eesel AI connects various knowledge sources, a key feature to consider as you get to know Einstein Copilot and its data limitations.

Then there’s the confidence issue. How can you be sure the AI will work as you expect before you let it interact with your customers? Einstein Copilot doesn’t have a great, risk-free way to test it in a real-world scenario. This is a huge advantage of a tool like eesel AI, which offers a powerful simulation mode. It lets you test your entire AI setup on thousands of your past tickets, giving you an accurate prediction of its performance and resolution rate before you ever go live.

A screenshot of the simulation mode in eesel AI, which allows users to test performance on past data before going live, a contrast to consider as you get to know Einstein Copilot.

The verdict: Powerful for Salesforce teams, but not for everyone

Salesforce Einstein Copilot is a serious, powerful AI assistant for companies that are deeply invested in the Salesforce world and have the budget and tech team to back it up. Its tight integration with your CRM data is its biggest strength.

But that strength comes with major trade-offs: high costs, a complicated and admin-heavy setup, and a heavy reliance on Salesforce being your single source of truth. For teams that need a more nimble, cost-effective, and flexible AI that works with their entire tech stack, not just one piece of it, there are better options out there.

The smarter path to AI-powered support

If you're looking for an AI solution that delivers real value without the enterprise headaches, you should take a look at eesel AI.

A screenshot of the eesel.ai landing page, showing an alternative AI solution as you get to know Einstein Copilot.

• Go live in minutes: Connect your helpdesk and knowledge sources with a single click. No long, drawn-out implementation projects.

• Unify all your knowledge: Don't box your AI into just your CRM. eesel AI works smoothly with Zendesk, Intercom, Confluence, Google Docs, Slack, and over 100 other tools.

• Test with confidence: Use our simulation mode to see your exact automation rate and ROI before you launch.

• Get total control, no developers needed: Our self-serve dashboard makes it easy for anyone on your team to customize the AI's actions and knowledge scope.

Ready to see how simple a powerful AI can be? Start your free trial with eesel AI today.