How does Salesforce use AI? A practical guide for 2025

If you use Salesforce, you’re probably seeing "AI" pop up everywhere. Between "Einstein GPT" and "Copilot," Salesforce is making some big promises about embedding artificial intelligence into its platform.

But what does that really mean for you and your team? How is Salesforce actually using AI to make your job easier, and more importantly, is it the right tool for what you need to do?

Let’s cut through the marketing buzz and take a real look at what Salesforce’s AI can do. We’ll get into what it does well, where it stumbles, and why a different kind of AI tool might give you more bang for your buck, a lot faster.

What is Salesforce AI?

To start, "Salesforce AI" isn’t one single thing you can buy. It’s a collection of AI tech that’s mostly known by the name Salesforce Einstein. Think of it as an intelligence layer they’ve built across the entire Salesforce world.

The two main parts you’ll run into are:

• Einstein: This is the original AI from Salesforce that’s been around for a bit. Its main job is making predictions, like spotting which leads are most likely to turn into customers (lead scoring) or helping with sales forecasts.

• Einstein GPT / Copilot: This is the newer, generative AI piece. It’s all about creating content for you, like writing emails or knowledge articles, summarizing conversations, and acting as a helpful assistant inside the Salesforce interface.

Salesforce’s big pitch is that they offer a single, trusted AI CRM. The logic is simple: all your customer data is in one place, and the AI uses that data to help everyone on your team be more productive. They also talk a lot about the Einstein Trust Layer, which is their system for making sure your private customer data doesn’t get absorbed by the large language models (LLMs) powering the AI.

How does Salesforce use AI in its products?

Salesforce AI isn’t a separate app; it’s a bunch of features woven into the different "Clouds" you might already be using. Here’s a simple breakdown of how it shows up in their main products.

How does Salesforce use AI in Sales Cloud

For sales folks, the main goal of the AI is to close deals faster and help reps zero in on the opportunities that matter most.

• What it does:

  • Writes emails and summarizes calls: Einstein can draft personalized emails for you by pulling customer data from the CRM. It can also create quick summaries after sales calls, highlighting what needs to happen next.

  • Scores leads and opportunities: It looks at your past sales data to predict which new leads are hot and which are not, so your team knows where to focus their energy.

  • Helps with forecasting: It analyzes your pipeline to give you a more accurate sales forecast than what you’d get from manual guesswork.

How does Salesforce use AI in Service Cloud

When it comes to customer service, the AI is focused on getting customer issues solved quickly and making support agents’ lives easier.

• What it does:

  • Suggests replies to customers: Einstein offers up relevant responses for agents to use when working on support tickets, pulling answers from your Salesforce knowledge base.

  • Sorts and sends tickets: It can automatically figure out what an incoming support ticket is about and send it to the right person or department.

  • Creates knowledge articles: Once an agent solves a tricky case, the AI can draft a knowledge base article about the solution to help with future tickets.

• Here’s a catch: These features work great when all your company knowledge is already stored neatly inside Salesforce. But what happens when the best, most current answers are in Confluence, a few important Google Docs, or buried in a recent Slack thread? The Salesforce AI can’t see any of that, so it often ends up giving generic or incomplete suggestions.

How does Salesforce use AI in Marketing and Commerce Cloud

For marketers and anyone running an e-commerce site, the AI is all about creating personalized experiences for tons of customers at once.

• What it does:

  • Personalizes content: The AI can generate different email subject lines or body copy that’s a better fit for specific groups of customers.

  • Helps create audience segments: You can ask it in plain English to build specific marketing lists, like "find all customers who bought from us twice last year but haven’t opened an email in two months."

  • Writes product descriptions: It can automatically create descriptions for products on your e-commerce site, which can save a lot of time.

The reality of using Salesforce AI: Common hurdles

While the feature list sounds great, feedback from people using it in the real world paints a slightly different picture. <quote text="If you browse forums like Reddit, you'll see users describe the experience as feeling a bit "half-baked" or not fully ready." sourceIcon="https://www.iconpacks.net/icons/2/free-reddit-logo-icon-2436-thumb.png" sourceName="Reddit" sourceLink="https://www.reddit.com/r/salesforce/comments/18ygf04/tell_me_about_your_experiences_with_salesforce_ai/">

These aren’t necessarily bugs, but they are the kind of headaches that come with any AI that’s designed to keep you inside its own ecosystem.

The long and complicated setup

Getting started with Salesforce AI usually isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. To unlock the really good stuff, you’re often looking at a long sales process, a big implementation project, and a steep learning curve for tools like Prompt Builder and Skills Builder. This can be a dealbreaker for teams that just want to try out AI quickly without committing a ton of time and money upfront.

The "all-your-data-in-one-place" problem

This is probably the biggest day-to-day frustration. Salesforce AI is built to work with data that’s already in Salesforce. It has a hard time learning from all the other places where your team’s best knowledge is actually kept.

Think about it: your support team figures out a tough problem in a Slack channel and writes up the solution on a Confluence page. Because that info isn’t in a Salesforce knowledge article, the Service Cloud AI is completely blind to it. The next time a customer has the same issue, the AI is no help, and your agent is stuck searching for the answer all over again. The AI you’re paying for is missing out on your most valuable knowledge.

It’s hard to test with confidence

You wouldn’t want to let an AI talk to your customers if you weren’t sure it would give good advice, right? While Salesforce has some ways to test its AI, it’s tough to see how it would perform on thousands of your actual past support tickets before you turn it on. This makes it hard to trust, especially when some users report the AI giving weird or unhelpful answers. Without a good way to test and fine-tune it in a safe space, you’re rolling the dice on its performance.

Salesforce AI pricing: The real cost

Salesforce has a bit of a reputation for complicated pricing, and its AI tools are no exception. It’s not just one number on an invoice, so figuring out the true cost can be tricky.

Here’s a rough idea of what to expect:

• Sales & Service Cloud Einstein: If you’re on the pricey Unlimited Edition, these features are often included. If not, you’re looking at an add-on that costs around $50 per user, per month. That adds up fast for a whole team.

• Einstein GPT Credits: The newer generative AI features work on a credit system. Your plan comes with some credits, but if your team starts using it a lot, you’ll have to buy more "Enterprise Expansion Packs" to keep it from running out.

• Hidden Costs: The price on the sticker isn’t the final price. The total cost of Salesforce AI pricing also includes things like implementation help, potentially hiring a specialized admin to manage it, and buying other Salesforce products (like Data Cloud) to really make it work.

Basically, the pricing is built for big companies that are already all-in on the Salesforce platform, and it makes it hard to predict what you’ll be paying from one month to the next.

A different approach: AI that works with your tools

Instead of being forced to move all your team’s knowledge into one platform just to use its AI, there’s another way. You can use an AI tool that plugs into the apps and workflows you’re already using.

This is where a tool like eesel AI fits in. It’s built to solve the exact problems we just talked about.

• Get started in minutes, not months: eesel AI is self-serve. You can connect your help desk (like Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Intercom) and all your other knowledge sources with just a few clicks. You can be up and running right away, without mandatory sales calls or months-long projects.

• Connect all your real knowledge: eesel AI securely connects to where your team actually documents things, Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, Slack, and your past tickets. This means the AI gives answers based on your team’s complete expertise, not just the tiny slice of it that lives in one tool.

• Test before you launch: eesel AI has a simulation mode that lets you test it on thousands of your past tickets. You can see exactly how it would have answered, get a real forecast of how many tickets it can resolve, and calculate your ROI before it ever interacts with a customer.

• Simple, predictable pricing: Unlike confusing credit systems or per-user fees, eesel AI has clear, flat-rate pricing. You know exactly what you’ll pay every month, with no surprises if you have a busy support week.

Final thoughts: Pick the AI that fits your team

Salesforce has built a powerful AI solution for companies that are deeply invested in its entire world. But for many, that power comes with a high price in complexity, locked-down data, and a long, expensive setup.

For teams that need an AI that’s flexible, fast, and can learn from all their scattered knowledge, a tool that works with your existing apps is a much more practical choice. The best AI strategy isn’t always about buying an all-in-one platform; it’s about adding smart automation that meets your team where they already are.

Your next steps

Curious what a more flexible AI could do for your team? You can find out in just a few minutes.

Try eesel AI for free and see what happens when an AI agent is trained on your complete knowledge base.