Comparing Einstein GPT by Salesforce vs Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI

Two titan competitors Salesforce and Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 have announced that they’re partnering with OpenAI to integrate advanced AI technology into their CRM systems. Such steps promise to further enhance their capabilities and enable more efficient management and analysis of customer data.

If you are interested in how the world’s two most significant CRM providers adopt AI in CRM strategies, join this short overview of Salesforce Einstein Copilot vs Microsoft Copilot.

When Did Microsoft and OpenAI Start Their Partnership?

Microsoft and OpenAI initiated a partnership long before the latter started making the headlines.

In fact, Microsoft and OpenAI have been partnering since 2019, collectively building Azure AI – an Azure-powered supercomputing platform aimed at developers and data scientists, giving access to a suite of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services, tools, and APIs. These tools allow developers to create their own AI solutions in the cloud with the security promise of Microsoft Azure. Moreover, all OpenAI’s generative language models are trained on the Azure platform.

Recent Microsoft AI Announcement: Bing AI and Edge

Up to this day, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, integrating its models into Office apps, Bing search engine, Edge, and Windows operating system. This indicates that the third phase of AI developments is moving further.

Following the above Microsoft AI announcement, we have seen significant innovations in two of Microsoft’s flagship products: Microsoft Bing AI Chat, available from the Edge browser.

Powered by the cutting-edge GPT-4 model, the new Microsoft AI Bing can:

• Search in a way that feels natural to how we talk and think;
• Answer follow-up questions;
• Include sources and citations for a more trustworthy search experience than with OpenAI ChatGPT, which doesn’t include any references;
• Generate images upon descriptions, and more.

Microsoft Copilot News

Since a March 2023 Microsoft AI Announcement, the new platform was launched — Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot.

Let’s define ‘What is Microsoft Copilot?’ Microsoft Copilot, an AI assistant by Microsoft, offers Microsoft 365 users automated features in apps, such as Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and others. Microsoft Copilot helps with management tasks and automates them.

What Does Copilot Do in Microsoft Suite

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-driven productivity tool. Basically, Microsoft Copilot is built on three tiers: Microsoft 365 apps, large language models (LLMs), and Microsoft Graph (for content).

The major user interaction in the suite is with Microsoft 365 apps. Below, you can find how Microsoft Copilot can fuel existing tools for work efficiency:

• Word: Quickly generate ideas straight in the document or rewrite existing text. Via chat ask for prompts to create content, visuals, and tables.
• PowerPoint: Automate manual slide creation by writing prompts in a presentation or a Word document. Additionally, prompts can aid with summaries and Q&As.
• Excel: Microsoft Copilot works with data and data-driven insights. Plus, it can provide suggestions for formulas and chart types and add them straight to the spreadsheet.
• Outlook: Copilot eases work with emails. With Microsoft Copilot you can tweak tone, clarify intent, and polish the whole message. Additionally, with Copilot you can schedule follow-ups. Have got a long yet informative thread in your inbox? Summarize emails quickly to stay on top of discussions.
• Teams: Integrate Microsoft Copilot into your working environment to get help with chats, calls, messages, and even whiteboards. By adding Copilot into your chats summarize the latest messages to stay in the loop and use prompts to write messages. During important calls activate Copilot to analyze the transcript of ongoing conversations to help you answer complex questions. Microsoft Copilot boosts productivity by leveraging AI on assigning tasks, jotting down key ideas for upcoming projects, and others.
• OneNote: Use natural language to ask Copilot to organize information in your notes, draft ideas, and create task lists.

Dynamics 365 AI and other MS products

Dynamics 365 AI can troubleshoot issues through many channels and in many departments. Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI is jam-packed with innovative technology.

• Dynamics 365 Sales: Copilot helps sales reps to summarize updates on leads and opportunities, craft email responses to customers, and generate a summary of meetings. The meeting summary incorporates relevant information from the seller’s CRM to provide details on products and pricing.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service: Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI for Customer Service provides contextual answers to queries in both chat and email. Available on desktop and mobile. With Copilot you can build virtual agents to get information from company websites and internal knowledge bases.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights: Together with Dynamics 365 Marketing, Copilot offers a deep customer search, audience segmentation, and behavior and demographic data. Also, marketers can generate email campaigns based on key topics.
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management: Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI aims to identify external issues such as weather, financials, and geography, and then surfaces any affected orders across materials, inventory, carriers, distribution networks, and more.

The ultimate goal of Microsoft Copilot is to enhance user experience and productivity through AI integration across its suite of products

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights | Source: Dynamics 365

Salesforce AI Announcement: Einstein GPT

Salesforce has been actively investing in and integrating AI into its products and overall strategy for quite some time. As early as 2016, they began incorporating AI Einstein as part of their sales and marketing cloud offerings.

However, until recently, Salesforce has not been partnering with OpenAI specifically. Following the Open AI Microsoft announcement, Salesforce revealed its partnership with OpenAI on March 7th, introducing the new Einstein GPT.

What is Salesforce Einstein GPT?

Salesforce Einstein GPT is a new iteration of the Salesforce AI Einstein technology, first released in 2016. In the new version, OpenAI-powered Einstein GPT utilizes public, private and external AI models with CRM data so that users can ask natural-language questions directly within Salesforce CRM.

What do public and private AI models mean?

• Private AI models are those developed by Salesforce internally. Many of these have been designed as part of previous Einstein AI versions.
• Public AI models are generative AI capabilities provided by ChatGPT as part of Salesforce and OpenAI partnership.
• External AI models that users can integrate with Salesforce AI Einstein and use both technologies alongside.

The biggest enhancement of the latest EinsteinGPT is that it utilizes data from Salesforce clouds and the Salesforce Data Cloud (Genie), saving loads of time on data inputs, copying, and pasting.

Salesforce Einstein GPT for Different Business Divisions

• EinsteinGPT for Developers: to boost developer productivity by anticipating and adding code snippets.
• EinsteinGPT for Service: generates knowledge articles from past case notes and public information, and automates personalized agent chat replies to customers, making service interactions faster and more efficient.
• EinsteinGPT for Sales: automates sales tasks such as composing emails, scheduling meetings, and preparing for the next interaction.
• EinsteinGPT for Marketing: generates personalized content to engage customers and prospects across email, mobile, web, and advertising.
• EinsteinGPT for Slack: provides customer insights in Slack, such as smart summaries of sales opportunities and background research on accounts.

At present, EinsteinGPT Salesforce is undergoing internal testing by Salesforce, as well as external testing by a few selected customers and partners. However, the company has not yet provided any information regarding the expected release date for this feature.

What is ChatGPT Slack? The Upgraded Salesforce AI Chatbot

In March 2023, Salesforce and OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT app for Slack. ChatGPT Slack is an AI-driven solution which is a part of EinsteinGPT.

Salesforce claims that the integration of EinsteinGPT into Slack can perform three main tasks:

• Provide instant conversation summaries.
• Quickly provide answers to questions.
• Assist with message writing through AI-driven writing assistance to save users time crafting replies, meeting notes, and status updates.

ChatGPT Slack in Action

• In the team meeting channel, you can ask ChatGPT Slack to identify top Opportunities, and Salesforce’s EinsteinGPT will take not only CRM data into consideration but also recent news about the economy.

• In private channels, you can use Slack’s EinsteinGPT to give your customers and prospects faster, more detailed answers to their questions.

Salesforce asserts that ChatGPT’s language model will not use any data that the app does not have permission to access. However, it is unclear whether companies will be able to opt out of data usage.

This latest Slack AI upgrade is an effort to remain competitive with Microsoft Teams OpenAI integration, which will benefit from the new AI-powered Bing. Slack currently has over 10 million daily active users, while Teams boasts over 270 million daily active users. (source 1, 2)

Salesforce AI Announcement: Einstein Copilot

On February 27th, 2024, Salesforce announced its new AI integration — Einstein Copilot, a conversational AI assistant for CRM. Now, available in public Beta, this generative AI chatbot is designed to improve customer experience.

Salesforce AI Einstein Copilot | Source: Salesforce

What is Salesforce Einstein Copilot?

Einstein Copilot gives a fresh take on communication with customers. This is one co-pilot across all your Salesforce applications with a focus on CRM. Most importantly, Einstein Copilot is seamlessly integrated with your existing customer data and workflows in Salesforce.

Built on top of Einstein GPT, the Copilot is trained on the company’s dataset of text and code. Einstein Copilot features include:

• Task automation: It can handle not just answering questions but also automating tasks. For instance, a customer service representative could use it to set up a workflow that automatically processes refunds for customers.
• Customizations: Users can tweak how the assistant responds to different users, whether they’re employees or customers, using Copilot Studio.
• Prompt Builder: Users can build, test, and create new queries that match the company’s brand and communication style, ensuring a consistent voice across interactions.
• Model Builder: Companies can build and select their own AI models from various providers, including Salesforce’s LLM or others, tailoring the AI capabilities to their specific needs.

Einstein Copilot redefines how businesses leverage AI to drive productivity and enhance personalization seamlessly within their workflow.

Sales teams can leverage Einstein AI to expedite deal closures. By using natural language prompts, they can quickly summarize records and generate personalized communications. This enables more tailored client engagement, leading to increased sales.

Financial service companies can simplify client onboarding and create personalized financial plans with Salesforce Einstein AI. By automating data collection and analysis, advisors can focus more on building client relationships and providing strategic advice, rather than manual data entry.

Potential Advantages for Businesses

Instead of wondering about the capabilities of ChatGPT, focus on finding the right generative AI solution for your company.

Ask your solution providers how they integrate LLMs and other generative AI resources to enhance customer experience, streamline operations, and increase efficiency.

Expect to hear about Salesforce and Microsoft, two major cloud computing companies that have developed their own branded versions of generative AI based on OpenAI’s library.

How AI Can Improve Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service in Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a software suite that comprises both ERP and CRM software, offering a variety of products to support customer insights, sales, and other functions.

Within Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, marketers can benefit from AI “copilots” that allow them to use natural language queries to explore, analyze, and understand customer segment sizes and preferences.

• Customer segmentation: A marketer can leverage the power of Copilot to identify customers residing in a specific city, with a high customer lifetime value, and who have made a purchase in the last 90 days. With just a few clicks, Copilot generates the results, including valuable information such as customers’ average age, product preferences, or average purchase price. These insights can then be used to create a targeted segment to support a campaign. With Copilot CRM, marketers can obtain a more profound understanding of their customers in almost real-time.
• Customization: Another feature offered is the ability to generate personalized content suggestions for customer emails, including information like pricing, promotions, and deadlines, tailored specifically to the recipient.
• Email features: A set of new capabilities have been introduced, which include the general availability of email replies and integrations for customizable emails. An instance of this is the ability to generate an email suggesting a meeting time that is based on the seller’s availability as indicated in their Outlook calendar. Additionally, there’s a feedback mechanism that enables sellers to rate the content generated by AI using a thumbs up or thumbs down, which in turn improves and refines future replies.
• Automated workflow: The Copilot feature offers various new capabilities such as AI-generated meetings and call summaries, including key topics and concerns discussed during the meeting. Based on CRM and meeting data, it can draft a summary of the discussion with actionable items and follow-up dates.
• Centralized integrations: The Copilot feature is integrated with Viva Sales and can also be purchased separately for other CRM systems, including Salesforce.
• Issue resolution: Additionally, Copilot can help diagnose more complex customer issues, discover resolutions, and summarize draft responses across all communication channels.

How AI Can Improve Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service in Salesforce

Einstein GPT can do pretty much the same things as Microsoft’s Copilot. It’s designed to help employees with different tasks like creating personalized emails for salespeople to send to customers and providing customer service professionals with specific answers to help them reply to customer questions faster.

Instead of relying on Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce plans to use OpenAI’s models to improve other products like Tableau, MuleSoft, and Slack. The idea is to learn from how people actually use these products so that the responses they get are better suited to their needs.

But still, it is worth looking at it in more detail the versatility of Einstein GPT and how the generative AI solution can be integrated into various Salesforce applications.

• Effective communication: With Einstein GPT, an account executive can quickly request an overview of a new client’s business, and even ask the AI to compose an introductory email to the client, incorporating recent news and asking for availability for a meeting. The entire process, from review to possible revision, takes only a few minutes. In the same example, the account executive can use Einstein GPT to create a private Slack channel between the prospect and themselves.
• Instant support: When a customer asks a specific question about a product in a chat, Einstein GPT can quickly generate an answer that includes the source of the information. An agent can edit or even ask for a revised version of the answer. Einstein can also suggest the next best action for the agent to take based on their judgment.
• Streamlined marketing tasks: Einstein ChatGPT can help a marketing manager create a landing page for an upcoming event in just a few minutes. The AI can suggest appropriate text length, add a relevant photo, and even create a signup form. This demo was particularly impressive.

Salesforce Einstein Copilot vs Microsoft Copilot

The comparison of two dominant out-of-the-box applications Einstein Copilot vs Microsoft Copilot is essential for businesses in CRM sphere.

Einstein Copilot is set to streamline time-consuming tasks, such as summary records, and automation, and to offer customized options to the clients. Data is stored in Salesforce ensuring user privacy through the Einstein Trust Layer.

Dynamics 365 Copilot has a wide range of pre-built functionalities across sales, management, and marketing. Using public and internal data, clients can boost customer service by using deep data for marketing strategies.

What’s best for your CRM: Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce AI Copilot? The choice is threefold: data privacy, customization, task automation. While Salesforce Einstein Copilot prioritizes the first two factors, Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers more functional features.

What’s next?

Microsoft and Salesforce are demonstrating the potential of Generative AI to enhance measurable business outcomes in the CRM, Contact Center, and Collaboration industries. However, they will not be the only ones offering easy-to-use toolsets to improve customer experience, employee productivity, and business efficiencies.

The implementation of services like summarization will occur rapidly, and the identification of areas where human intelligence is necessary to fine-tune prompts and improve output will also be swift.

Rather than pondering the integration of ChatGPT into their operations, companies ought to inquire of their solution providers about their ongoing efforts to integrate generative AI into their solutions.

How to Choose Which Platform Suits You Best?

While there is plenty of information on the web on the most recent developments within Microsoft and Salesforce ecosystems, hands-on experience or having a seasoned professional is invaluable in navigating the complexities of these platforms.

As a CRM expert with over 25 years of experience in the industry, Ascendix is uniquely positioned to provide the necessary guidance and support for companies choosing between Dynamics vs Salesforce solutions.

Our CRM consultants will:

• Conduct a thorough business analysis of your niche’s intricacies to spot the pain points that can be solved with new technologies.
• Help centralize sales processes and customer data within Salesforce or Dynamics 365.
• Harmonize data exchange between integrated solutions and Salesforce.
• Assist with dataset deduplication and enrichment.
• Set up CRM analytics and reporting to display accurate and up-to-date information visually appealing.

If you have already been using Salesforce or Dynamics for some time, our experts will conduct an in-depth feature gap analysis or optimize an excessive number of flows.

Want to learn more about how we can help you with workflow automation? Reach out to us.