Salesforce AI in 2025: A complete guide to Einstein features, use cases, and alternatives
Kenneth Pangan
Last edited August 1, 2025
Let’s be honest, artificial intelligence is everywhere in business software now, especially in customer relationship management (CRM). Salesforce is leading the charge with its platform, Einstein, which aims to plug AI into just about every product they offer. The goal is to make every employee more productive and every customer interaction smoother.
It sounds great on paper, but it’s smart to dig a little deeper than the shiny marketing materials. Is it the right fit for your team? This guide will give you a straight-up overview of what Salesforce AI is all about. We’ll break down its features, how it works, common ways to use it, and how it compares to other specialized tools that might work even better for you.
What is Salesforce AI and Einstein GPT?
So, what exactly is Salesforce AI? You’ll mostly hear it called by its brand name: Einstein. It isn’t a standalone app you log into. Instead, it’s an AI layer built into all the Salesforce products you might already use, designed to make them smarter.
The newest version, Einstein GPT, mixes Salesforce’s own private AI models with large language models (LLMs) from partners like OpenAI. The real value comes from how it connects to your company’s own data. By using the Salesforce Data Cloud to pull together customer information from all your different systems, Einstein can deliver AI-generated content and insights that are actually relevant to your business.
Of course, data security is a major concern for any business. Salesforce tackles this with its Einstein GPT Trust Layer. It acts like a security guard, masking sensitive info before it goes to a public AI model. This means your private customer data stays private and isn’t used to train those big public models, giving you the confidence to use generative AI without risking privacy.
How Salesforce AI works behind the scenes.
Key components of the Salesforce AI platform
Salesforce AI is made up of a few different parts, each built for a different type of user, from a sales rep needing a quick email draft to an admin building out the whole system. Let’s break down what those parts are.
Einstein Copilot: your conversational Salesforce AI assistant
This is the piece of Salesforce AI you’ll see the most. Einstein Copilot is a chat assistant that sits in the sidebar of your Salesforce apps. You can ask it questions in plain English to summarize records, draft emails, or get a plan for what to do next with a deal or a support case. Think of it as a helper that’s always there to cut down on manual tasks.
Einstein Copilot sidebar.
Copilot Studio: the Salesforce AI admin and developer toolkit
Behind the scenes, you have Copilot Studio. This is the toolkit for admins and developers to customize how the AI works. This is where the heavy lifting happens, and it gives you a sense of the work involved to get Einstein running just right for your team. The studio gives you:
- Prompt builder: Instead of users typing whatever they want, admins can set up pre-approved prompt templates for certain tasks. For instance, a template could be “Draft a follow-up email to this customer about their overdue invoice,” which helps keep things consistent.
- Skills builder: This is a low-code tool that lets you build custom AI-powered actions. It’s like setting permissions for your AI. You can decide what tasks the AI can perform, what data it can see, and which workflows it’s allowed to start.
- Model builder: For companies with their own data science teams, this lets you plug in your own custom AI models (BYOM). You can connect a model you’ve trained on another platform to work directly with your Salesforce data, which makes the whole system more open.
Salesforce AI Copilot Studio toolkit.
Generative Salesforce AI features across the suite
On top of the main Copilot assistant, Salesforce has sprinkled generative AI features throughout almost all its products. The full list is pretty long, but here are a few highlights:
- Sales Cloud: Get AI-powered sales emails, automatic call summaries, and smart suggestions for managing your sales pipeline.
- Service Cloud: Generate service replies, get automatic summaries for cases, and create knowledge articles from past support conversations.
- Platform: Einstein for Formulas helps you write complex formulas using natural language, while Einstein for Flow can build an entire workflow from a simple sentence.
Using natural language with Einstein for Formulas.
Real-world applications and use cases for Salesforce AI
Okay, that’s the tech. But how does Salesforce AI actually help a business in the real world? Here are some common ways different teams use it.
Salesforce AI use cases in sales and marketing
For sales and marketing teams, Einstein can automate some of the more tedious tasks and help fine-tune their approach.
- Sales: Reps can automate time-sinks like researching prospects and prepping for meetings. Einstein can draft personalized outreach emails based on a customer’s history and summarize sales calls to point out sentiment and next steps. It also provides AI-driven insights to help with forecasting and figuring out which deals are most likely to close.
- Marketing: Marketers can use plain English to ask the Data Cloud questions and build very specific audience segments. From there, Einstein can help write copy for email campaigns, create personalized landing pages, and analyze performance data to improve future campaigns.
An example of a sales email generated by Salesforce AI.
Salesforce AI use cases in customer and field service
AI can be a huge help for service teams by automating responses and helping agents solve problems faster.
- Customer Service: Einstein can automatically generate personalized replies to common customer questions, pulling information from knowledge articles and past cases. It creates quick summaries of long support chats, which is a lifesaver when a case gets escalated. It can even draft new knowledge articles based on solved tickets, helping you build up your self-service options.
- Field Service: For teams working outside the office, Einstein offers mobile workers AI-generated “pre-work briefings.” These summaries pull together all the important details for a job, making sure the technician shows up prepared and can get it done right the first time.
An automatic case summary created by Salesforce AI in Service Cloud.
These features are great, but they mostly rely on data that’s already inside Salesforce. For support teams, this can be a problem. A lot of their best knowledge lives elsewhere. This is where a more specialized tool can make a big difference. For example, a dedicated AI agent like eesel AI connects to a wider range of sources like past tickets in Zendesk, guides in Google Docs, or wikis in Confluence to deliver more complete answers.
Salesforce AI use cases for developers and operations
Salesforce AI has perks for the tech folks, too.
- Einstein for Developers: This tool works like a coding assistant right inside the development environment. It can help write Apex code, explain what a chunk of code does, and check for security weak spots, which helps speed up development.
- Einstein for Flow: Admins can just describe a process they want to automate in plain text like, “When an opportunity is marked ‘Closed Won,’ create a task for the onboarding team and send a welcome email.” Einstein will then generate a draft workflow to get them started.
A visual workflow demonstrating the power of Salesforce AI automation.
The pros, cons, and real cost of Salesforce AI
The potential of Salesforce AI is huge, but it’s important to look at the pros and cons honestly. The marketing materials show a perfect world, but what are real users saying? Let’s get into it.
What users like: the benefits of an integrated Salesforce AI platform
The biggest selling point for Einstein is how deeply it’s built into Salesforce. If your company already lives and breathes Salesforce, the upsides are pretty obvious:
- A single source of truth: The AI models are fed directly from your CRM data, giving you a consistent view of the customer across every department.
- No messy integrations: You don’t have to manage clunky connectors or data syncs between your AI and your main business data. It’s already connected.
- Built-in security: The Einstein Trust Layer offers a level of data privacy that’s essential for large organizations, giving them peace of mind when using generative AI.
For businesses all-in on the Salesforce platform, this unified approach is very appealing.
The challenges of Salesforce AI: what the marketing materials don’t say
But it’s not always smooth sailing. If you browse user forums like the r/salesforce subreddit, you’ll find plenty of people talking about the difference between the sales pitch and what it’s actually like to use.
- Confusing pricing: Salesforce’s AI pricing is anything but straightforward. It’s not a flat fee. It often includes per-user licenses (for example, Agentforce for Service costs $125 per user, per month) on top of usage-based “Flex Credits.” This makes it really hard to budget, and costs can spiral, especially for busy support teams.
- It’s not plug-and-play: As some users have pointed out, many of the AI features feel “half-baked” or “over-sold.” They aren’t ready to go right out of the box. Getting them to a point where they are actually useful takes a lot of time, technical skill, and continuous tweaking.
- It’s a walled garden: Einstein is mainly trained on data that lives inside Salesforce, like CRM records and Knowledge articles. If your company’s most useful and current knowledge is stored in other places like past support tickets in Intercom or internal docs in Notion, Einstein will likely struggle to find the best answers.
The alternative: eesel AI vs. Salesforce AI for support teams
These issues, especially for customer support teams, are why more specialized AI tools have popped up. eesel AI was built to solve the problems that general-purpose AI inside a CRM can create.
It works on top of the helpdesk you already have, like Zendesk or Freshdesk, so you don’t have to go through a costly or painful migration. Its predictable, pay-per-interaction pricing model avoids per-agent fees, so costs are clear and easy to manage as your team grows. Most importantly, it can learn from over 100 sources, giving it a a ccess to your entire knowledge base for more accurate and helpful answers.
| Feature | Salesforce AI (Einstein for Service) | eesel AI |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Broad CRM AI (Sales, Service, etc.) | Specialized AI for Customer Support & ITSM |
| Pricing Model | Per-agent licenses + usage credits | Pay-per-interaction, no per-agent fees |
| Implementation | Complex setup within Salesforce | Simple layer on your existing helpdesk |
| Training Sources | Salesforce Knowledge, CRM data | 100+ sources (tickets, docs, wikis, etc.) |
| Key Advantage | Deep integration with Salesforce data | Predictable cost, flexibility, and faster results for support |
Smarter support and automation start today
So, what’s the verdict? Salesforce AI is a seriously powerful set of tools, especially if your business is already built around the Salesforce ecosystem. The all-in-one approach is definitely convenient.
But that convenience can come with a trade-offs. The confusing costs, the setup headaches, and the fact it’s limited to Salesforce data can make it a tough sell, particularly for customer support teams who need flexibility.
And that’s where a focused tool like eesel AI comes in. If you’re looking for a more flexible, affordable, and powerful AI tool that plugs right into your existing helpdesk, it’s a great alternative. It works with the tools you already use, gives you a quicker path to seeing results, and offers the control you need to build a great support experience.
If you’re ready to see how a specialized AI agent can transform your customer support, start your free trial of eesel AI or book a demo to see it in action.
Frequently asked questions
The pricing is complex and can be hard to predict. It usually involves a mix of per-user, per-month licenses and usage-based “Flex Credits,” which means your total cost can vary and potentially become very high, especially for active teams.
It is not typically a plug-and-play solution. While the features are powerful, getting them to work effectively often requires significant setup, technical skill, and continuous customization from an admin or developer to be truly useful.
Not very well, as it primarily works with data living inside Salesforce. If your company’s most important knowledge is in external tools like Google Docs, Zendesk, or Confluence, it will likely struggle to provide complete and accurate answers.
Specialized tools often provide more accurate answers because they connect to a wider range of knowledge sources beyond just Salesforce. They also tend to have more predictable pricing and can be implemented much faster on top of your existing helpdesk.
