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David Fan

Vice President, Product Management, Communications, Salesforce Industries

Salesforce

Harnessing AI for better billing: Exploring Salesforce’s Billing Inquiry Manager

Customer satisfaction and operational efficiency are more important than ever for an organization’s success. In response to enterprise needs, Salesforce Inc. released its Billing Inquiry Manager, an AI-powered tool designed to transform the way communication service providers handle customer inquiries.The solution ensures faster, more accurate and trusted interactions, according to David Fan (pictured), vice president and general manager of communications at Salesforce.“One thing that we constantly hear from our customer is, ‘AI is great, generative AI is great, but how do you make it manageable and deployable?’” Fan said

play_circle_outline Mobile World Congress coverage in Barcelona, Spain

play_circle_outline Trends in the communications industry (customer experience, product innovation, operation efficiency)

play_circle_outline Salesforce's AI capabilities and announcements

play_circle_outline Benefits of AI and its future potential

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David Fan | Salesforce

David Fan

Vice President, Product Management, Communications, Salesforce Industries Salesforce

(intro music)

>> Good afternoon, Nerd Fam, and welcome back to beautiful Barcelona, Spain. We're here at Mobile World Congress at the end of day four of the Cubes Live coverage. (laughing) It's been an absolutely fantastic week. I'm joined by analyst, Shelly Kramer, and we are going to have an awesome last session for you, someone who sees across verticals, David Fan, thank you so much for being here with us from Salesforce.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> How you doing? How you feeling? You're holding up. You look well, you look like you're holding up well for four days of the show.

>> Yeah. I wish we'll have a few more days. This is so exciting, right? (Savannah laughing)

>> I mean, between the great networking, Barcelona and all the fun conversations we're having-

>> And the food.

>> And exactly the tapas, the vino, I mean, I want to live here now, you know?

>> David Fan: Yeah.

>> We all move in. (both laughing) Tell us a little bit about, I mean, you sit at an apex where you can see a lot of different verticals and things happening. What are some of the trends in the communications industry right now?

>> Yeah, it's very interesting 'cause if you look at the trends, you can get a lot of the information from this conference as well.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> There are three repeating themes that we often hear about. One is about customer experience, right? Like the customer expectation keeps rising in a communication space. The service providers are looking at how to keep that up.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> It's interesting because we did a survey recently in collaboration with Ambia, and as 500 communication service providers, employees, what are top of mind for you?

>> Yeah.

>> And one of the things they said is about customer experience, digital first, self-service. In fact, half of the respondents said that 50% of the sales and service interaction will be made only online

in two years. >> Shelly Kramer: Yeah.

>> Wow. >> Yeah. So that's one of them. The second trend that we often hear about, it's the need to accelerate product innovations to quickly launch, offer, to reduce the time to market. The third trend that we often hear about, it's how to improve the operation efficiency.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> How to make things more productive, and how to reduce the cost to serve.

>> You know, I think that when you think about, when we talk about customer experience, of course it's incredibly important that we serve those end user customers. And that's not new, right? I mean, that's been a reality forever. But I think also there's the issue of focusing on the contact center agent and you know, when you think about it-

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> They come to work every day and I mean, people aren't calling them because they're happy.

>> Cause they want to give 'em a compliment. Yeah.

>> People are calling them because they're pissed off-

>> Yeah.

>> They have a problem, they want a solution, and sometimes, you know, they may have been trying to do it yourself, and you get frustrated and everything else. So at every interaction is you're having with someone not having their best day. So being able to have solutions, technology solutions, that make an agent's job easier, faster, better equip them to serve the customer, it's a better end result all the way around.

>> Yeah, I agree. I agree. We need to look after them. They do have a very really, really tough job.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Oh my gosh, yes.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah and there's so many ways, you know, we think about the user experiences, knowledge workers, or in other ways, but everyone on a team deserves a great experience, whatever that, whatever that might be. Kind of sitting there, what are some of the biggest challenges that Salesforce company or clients are currently trying to solve?

>> Yeah. I think one thing that we can help, like, going back to the question earlier, I think that's the wonder about technologies, right? Technology can help people to do things faster. I think AI, everybody's talking about AI.

>> Shelly Kramer: We haven't heard anything about AI this week at all. (laughing) This is the first, actually.

>> Oh, great.

>> What does that acronym stand for? (all laughing)

>> Well, maybe we should extend this and we can spend more time on AI. I think AI is something that will really change the way people work.

>> Shelly Kramer: Yes.

>> Especially about generative AI. I think in the same research that we did, I think a lots of people have already started to use AI.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah. >> Predictive AI.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> Two thirds of the respondents are still thinking about how to use their generative AI.

>> Shelly Kramer: Yeah. >> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah. Lot of conversations, but not as much implementation. Had a lot of discussions around that and kind of the gap between the hype and the yay.

>> Exactly.

>> And then also, what are we, what are we doing with it?

>> Yeah. One thing that we constantly hear from our customer is, AI is great, generative AI is great, but how do you make it manageable?

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah. >> And deployable.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> I think that's the key to success.

>> Well, and I think that, you know, one of the things, to Savannah's point, the question about customer challenges is I think, one of the main challenges that customers have is, it's a data issue.

>> David Fan: Yeah.

>> We have so much data, how do we get our arms around it? How do we use this data? And I think that really is what Salesforce is known for helping solve for, is being able to, especially in the contact center, AI can help quickly pull out important pieces of information and help manage the, you know, help use data to solve customer problems more quickly. And I think that's what we need. That's exciting.

>> Yeah, absolutely. >> It is very exciting.

Speaking of exciting- >> Yeah.

>> Salesforce had some announcements this week, yeah? Tell us about those.

>> Yeah, so we announced the first generative AI power application for communications, Building Inquiry Manager. So going back to what we said about how we can help the service agent to be better, that's what this is all about. Leveraging generative AI to ask them to handle some of the most common requests that they get. What is my bill? Why is my bill so high? We want to empower them to allow them to summarize lots of data behind the scene.

>> Yeah.

>> And provide trusted recommendation so that they can communicate back to their customers. I think the key word is about trust.

>> I was going to actually call that out. Keep going.

>> Yeah, yeah. Because I think AI, I think a lot of people will experiment AI, but how do you actually make it manageable? Going back to some of our customer's concern, and this is where Salesforce come in. How do you provide a trusted platform so that you can make sure that you ask the right question and the right, the information is protected so that you don't actually share your customer information with other people, and make sure that there's no hallucination,

no toxicity in the response- >> [Savannah Peterson] Right.

>> And present back to the agent and let them to have confidence to share this information with their customers.

>> You bring up such a good point because, you know, there's hype and we're all excited. We're technologists, you know, AI is very exciting. However, the general public, there's still a lot of doomerism, a lot of fear, and particularly in these types of roles, people are afraid that AI will unseat them from their job. The reality is, what we're talking about here is, I think it's just going to make your job suck less, but in order to do that, you have to trust it. And I think that's great. What sort of, how does Salesforce help build that trust?

>> Yeah. So Salesforce has been in the AI business for 10 years. We are the number one, we are the leader in AI. We are generating 1 trillion predictions every week.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Whoa. >> 1 trillion. (laughing)

>> 1 trillion predictions a week.

>> David Fan: Right. So we- >> Casual. Jeepers. (laughing)

>> Well, they're also the biggest CRM. I mean, arguably the biggest CRM platform there is. So that's not a surprise, really.

>> That's right. That's right.

>> Still an incredible volume though.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. So the beauty of this, is all these predictions all embedded into your CRM, so that every time when you interact with your customer, whether you want to market something to them.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> Sell them something or service them, you have AI to sort of walk with you. Einstein Copilot was launched because of that, to give you the ability to ask the right questions, protect the information, and get trusted results back.

>> Okay, so the Billing Inquiry Manager, this newly announced offering, this is available in the communications cloud console, so it's easy to access. They're already using, agents are already using this, so it's easy to find and use.

>> Yes, yes. It's part of the communications cloud.

It's all embedded. >> Shelly Kramer: Okay.

>> So that it is available to the agent console as a great tool to guide the agent through those common tasks that they have to deal with.

>> Do you get to hear back from any of these agents on how they're enjoying that experience?

>> We have lots of feedback from customer this week-

>> Yeah.

>> As we are showing them. Everyone just, one is that they like the concept of how you can guide the agents through this, but the thing that they really like is what is underneath the hood. Like, again, going back to how do you make it manageable?

>> Yeah.

>> How do you make it deployable so that you don't share information, confidential information externally. And again, going back to the whole trusted recommendation coming back from the engine.

>> Yeah. It's impressive. I mean, Salesforce, you've been a leader in so many spaces for a long time. It makes sense that you're the trusted partner in this case. What's your advice for customers just hearing about this right now, who might be interested in going down this path?

>> Yeah. Well, trust is our number one core value. I think my recommendation to customer who wants to embark on this journey, is make sure that you have a right data strategy, right? I think, Shelly, you mentioned about it is important that you have good data. Data is the foundation of AI.

>> Right.

>> And to make sure that you have a good data strategy, and Salesforce have data cloud to help you to harmonize your data, could be in Salesforce or externally, and allow you to harmonize, allow you to gain insight and to be able to act upon it.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Love that.

>> So that's what I would suggest customers to do.

>> Yeah. It sounds like good advice. I would take it if I was them.

>> Awesome.

>> You mentioned that Salesforce has been on the AI path for over a decade, not surprising. How are you looking in the future? Where are you going to be directing the AI ship within Salesforce next?

>> Well, we believe that the AI will become more autonomous over time. We believe that every interaction can be powered by AI. And you can see that throughout our applications, whether you are generating marketing content, whether you are generating sales interactions, email to your customers.

>> Yeah.

>> Or doing case summary, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Through the service scenario. All those can be powered by the generative AI and this use case will continue.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> It'll become more sophisticated, more autonomous, and the future is bright.

>> You know, I think it's a little bit like, you know, how we roam around with our devices and wifi just happens, right? And it's just kind of, we don't even think about it. It just is there, it's progress. It's helping us live our lives in every way. And I think really that's what we're seeing, and we're at the beginning stages of it, but I think that's what we're seeing when it comes to AI. Whether it's, you know, you're using AI when you're writing your text messages, or when you're writing emails, or when you're, you know, doing your contact center job. I think that it will just become so ubiquitous.

>> Yeah.

>> And so we don't even think about it.

>> That's right.

>> It's just there. It's just like wifi, it's just there, it's powering our lives. And, but the funny thing is that when you don't have it, you know, it's like, wow, I forgot how great this was. So I think that we're really in the beginning steps of getting to that point where it's just everywhere. It's carrying the load, it's making everything we do better, more efficient, more productive, all those sort of things. And it's an exciting time.

>> Oh yeah. The future is absolutely bright. I got a question for you, David. Taking off your Salesforce hat and just as a human being on this planet, what has you most excited about AI?

>> Well, I think as a person, I think AI just helps me to enjoy the information a lot more, right. Because you have information that is readily available to you.

>> Yeah.

>> So you just are able to get things done quicker. You will be able to spend more time on other things that you would like to do.

>> Right, exactly. More efficiency.

>> More efficiency, exactly.

>> Yeah. More efficiency to have more fun and to eat more tapas.

>> Yeah. Have more tacos here, tapas here-

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> And enjoy it outside a bit more. So that I can get my work done quicker.

>> [Savannah Peterson] That's what I'm talking about. Speaking of, any highlights for you in Barcelona this week?

>> I think it's all about the customers for us.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> I think to be able to meet with a lot of industry experts, spending lots of time with customers, learn from them, sharing our visions with them, that is the best part about this conference. And of course, spending time with you two.

>> Well, oh, he's smooth. He is smooth, isn't he? Okay so-

>> I'll take a day four. (laughing)

>> What about, as you've kind of walked the show floor, have you seen anything that's really been portrayed, I mean, there's a helicopter over there, there's an AI powered ambulance, I mean, there's all different kinds of, what's the coolest thing that you've seen while you've been here?

>> I think the coolest thing for me is seeing the reaction when people understand how AI can actually work, right? How can you, how can we make it deployable and manageable? You can see the light bulb just keep blinking.

>> Shelly Kramer: Yeah.

>> When you show them how underneath the hood, how can you actually make it work in your real life? Making it tangible, making it practical for them. That was, the reaction was priceless in my mind.

>> Yeah.

>> Oh, I love to hear that. And it is so nice that customer feedback, the sense of community. I will say as a collective community here in the mobile space and even just in tech Nerdland in general, I do feel like there's a lot of joy and excitement.

>> Yeah.

>> And curiosity, I hope. Yeah, I dunno, I'm loving the optimistic vibes.

>> It's a great community. There's a lot of innovations as we come together along with our partners. It's so exciting that you can have all these creative ideas and we can push the industry forward. So I think that this is all good.

>> Well, this is a tech nerd's paradise, you know? I mean, that's really part of the joy that you feel is that we're all immersed in this innovative space doing different things, focusing on different things, but we are really watching the future unfold. So it's easy to get excited about it, you know? Absolutely.

>> Yeah. It really is. Well, David, thank you so much for being here with us. This was fantastic, exciting, insightful. Congratulations on the announcements this week.

>> Thank you so much.

>> And we really look forward to having you on the show again, hopefully with some customers, and we can see how this all getting-

>> Yeah, for sure. We'd love to.

>> In the wild next time. Shelly Kramer, what a fabulous week together.

>> Yes.

>> I appreciate all of our time, and thank all of you for tuning in from home or wherever you are around this beautiful planet. We're here from the Cubes Studio in Barcelona, where we've decided to move in at Mobile World Congress. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching The Cube, the leading source for enterprise tech coverage. (outro music)

David Fan | Salesforce

(intro music)

>> Thanks for having me.

>> How you doing? How you feeling? You're holding up. You look well, you look like you're holding up well for four days of the show.

>> Yeah. I wish we'll have a few more days. This is so exciting, right? (Savannah laughing)

>> I mean, between the great networking, Barcelona and all the fun conversations we're having-

>> And the food.

>> And exactly the tapas, the vino, I mean, I want to live here now, you know?

>> David Fan: Yeah.

>> Yeah, it's very interesting 'cause if you look at the trends, you can get a lot of the information from this conference as well.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> It's interesting because we did a survey recently in collaboration with Ambia, and as 500 communication service providers, employees, what are top of mind for you?

>> Yeah.

in two years. >> Shelly Kramer: Yeah.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> How to make things more productive, and how to reduce the cost to serve.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> They come to work every day and I mean, people aren't calling them because they're happy.

>> Cause they want to give 'em a compliment. Yeah.

>> People are calling them because they're pissed off-

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, I agree. I agree. We need to look after them. They do have a very really, really tough job.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Oh my gosh, yes.

>> Yeah.

>> Shelly Kramer: We haven't heard anything about AI this week at all. (laughing) This is the first, actually.

>> Oh, great.

>> What does that acronym stand for? (all laughing)

>> Well, maybe we should extend this and we can spend more time on AI. I think AI is something that will really change the way people work.

>> Shelly Kramer: Yes.

>> Especially about generative AI. I think in the same research that we did, I think a lots of people have already started to use AI.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah. >> Predictive AI.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> Two thirds of the respondents are still thinking about how to use their generative AI.

>> Shelly Kramer: Yeah. >> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah. Lot of conversations, but not as much implementation. Had a lot of discussions around that and kind of the gap between the hype and the yay.

>> Exactly.

>> And then also, what are we, what are we doing with it?

>> Yeah. One thing that we constantly hear from our customer is, AI is great, generative AI is great, but how do you make it manageable?

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah. >> And deployable.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> I think that's the key to success.

>> Well, and I think that, you know, one of the things, to Savannah's point, the question about customer challenges is I think, one of the main challenges that customers have is, it's a data issue.

>> David Fan: Yeah.

>> Yeah, absolutely. >> It is very exciting.

Speaking of exciting- >> Yeah.

>> Salesforce had some announcements this week, yeah? Tell us about those.

>> Yeah.

>> And provide trusted recommendation so that they can communicate back to their customers. I think the key word is about trust.

>> I was going to actually call that out. Keep going.

no toxicity in the response- >> [Savannah Peterson] Right.

>> And present back to the agent and let them to have confidence to share this information with their customers.

>> Yeah. So Salesforce has been in the AI business for 10 years. We are the number one, we are the leader in AI. We are generating 1 trillion predictions every week.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Whoa. >> 1 trillion. (laughing)

>> 1 trillion predictions a week.

>> David Fan: Right. So we- >> Casual. Jeepers. (laughing)

>> Well, they're also the biggest CRM. I mean, arguably the biggest CRM platform there is. So that's not a surprise, really.

>> That's right. That's right.

>> Still an incredible volume though.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. So the beauty of this, is all these predictions all embedded into your CRM, so that every time when you interact with your customer, whether you want to market something to them.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> Yes, yes. It's part of the communications cloud.

It's all embedded. >> Shelly Kramer: Okay.

>> So that it is available to the agent console as a great tool to guide the agent through those common tasks that they have to deal with.

>> Do you get to hear back from any of these agents on how they're enjoying that experience?

>> We have lots of feedback from customer this week-

>> Yeah.

>> How do you make it deployable so that you don't share information, confidential information externally. And again, going back to the whole trusted recommendation coming back from the engine.

>> Right.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Love that.

>> So that's what I would suggest customers to do.

>> Yeah. It sounds like good advice. I would take it if I was them.

>> Awesome.

>> You mentioned that Salesforce has been on the AI path for over a decade, not surprising. How are you looking in the future? Where are you going to be directing the AI ship within Salesforce next?

>> Yeah.

>> Or doing case summary, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Through the service scenario. All those can be powered by the generative AI and this use case will continue.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> It'll become more sophisticated, more autonomous, and the future is bright.

>> Yeah.

>> And so we don't even think about it.

>> That's right.

>> Oh yeah. The future is absolutely bright. I got a question for you, David. Taking off your Salesforce hat and just as a human being on this planet, what has you most excited about AI?

>> Well, I think as a person, I think AI just helps me to enjoy the information a lot more, right. Because you have information that is readily available to you.

>> Yeah.

>> So you just are able to get things done quicker. You will be able to spend more time on other things that you would like to do.

>> Right, exactly. More efficiency.

>> More efficiency, exactly.

>> Yeah. More efficiency to have more fun and to eat more tapas.

>> Yeah. Have more tacos here, tapas here-

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> And enjoy it outside a bit more. So that I can get my work done quicker.

>> [Savannah Peterson] That's what I'm talking about. Speaking of, any highlights for you in Barcelona this week?

>> I think it's all about the customers for us.

>> [Savannah Peterson] Yeah.

>> Well, oh, he's smooth. He is smooth, isn't he? Okay so-

>> I'll take a day four. (laughing)

>> Shelly Kramer: Yeah.

>> When you show them how underneath the hood, how can you actually make it work in your real life? Making it tangible, making it practical for them. That was, the reaction was priceless in my mind.

>> Yeah.

>> And curiosity, I hope. Yeah, I dunno, I'm loving the optimistic vibes.

>> Yeah. It really is. Well, David, thank you so much for being here with us. This was fantastic, exciting, insightful. Congratulations on the announcements this week.

>> Thank you so much.

>> And we really look forward to having you on the show again, hopefully with some customers, and we can see how this all getting-

>> Yeah, for sure. We'd love to.

>> In the wild next time. Shelly Kramer, what a fabulous week together.

>> Yes.