Businesses today are generating mountains of data and forward-looking business leaders recognize that there are critical insights hidden inside their data. With AI, businesses can unlock these insights to identify trends, opportunities, and challenges. Building a strong enterprise-wide data culture along with robust and trusted AI holds the key to unlocking these hidden insights. While business leaders recognize the value of data for decision-making, a recent global survey conducted by Salesforce amongst 10,000 of them reveals some interesting facts. 67% of them are not using data for making critical decisions like product or service pricing Less than 33% use data to drive strategies for new markets 79% don’t leverage data for diversity and inclusion While the above numbers revealed something unexpected, here is what the survey summarized. Companies that make data-driven decisions are more likely to beat sales targets than those that don't Companies that combine AI with their data showed an average increase of 30% in revenue Companies that embrace this approach are able to reassign human and financial capital quickly and can create personalized customer experiences much faster What can you do now? Here are some suggestions for creating a strong data culture. We will take these items up later in this article. Put together the right team Provide them with the right tools and training Test your theories on a pilot scale and iterate Prioritize the human aspect of your data culture Identify areas where AI can derive more value from your data Data-driven V/s data-informed In a data-driven company, most of the organization’s employees can access and analyze data, draw inferences about what it means, create a dashboard, visualize data, and use all of these to determine the next steps. Employees in a data-driven organization don't depend on data analysts to do this. Being data-informed enables organizations to make decisions based on a mix of data, research, experience, and insights. Data-informed organizations may or may not have the skills that data-driven organizations have. Why is it critical to build a strong data culture Business leaders have to deal with countless challenges before embarking on building a data culture. Avoid over-analysis by starting with a single use case that validates the value of your new data culture approach. McKinsey research has shown that data-driven organizations achieve their goals faster and their data culture initiatives contribute at least 20% to earnings. Here’s why this works: Data analysis identifies actionable trends Data analysis identifies patterns that unlock value and enable organizations to utilize opportunities faster. Adding AI to the mix can accelerate the process by doing a deeper dive into data analysis at scale and serving up recommendations. Combining data and AI drives growth, promotes innovation, fosters collaboration, and creates uniqueness. AI and machine learning increase success by 30% Organizations that still rely on legacy knowledge and instinct to guide decision-making are missing out on opportunities. With AI and machine learning, organizations can make quick and accurate decisions. According to Salesforce research, adding AI to organizational data and business functions eliminates the guesswork from the decision-making process and increases success by an average of 30% across important metrics like operational efficiency, employee productivity, and topline growth. Strategic work keeps employees engaged When decision-making is guided by data analysis, employees spend less time on mundane tasks that add little or no value and can focus on strategic or creative tasks. This keeps them engaged and improves their productivity. Salesforce research shows that 84% of organizations that have adopted a data culture observed higher employee retention. Empower the right team The best way to create a team of data champions is by showing not telling. Illustrate with real numbers how data-driven decision-making increases revenue and customer satisfaction and streamlines operations. Instead of choosing any random use case to illustrate your point, capture their attention by selecting a project that scores a financial win and one that you can scale for greater impact. Here’s how you can start: Step 1: Put together the right team Create a working group of employees from across the organization with diverse backgrounds and functions. These team members should have a collaborative mindset, unique skills and abilities, and individual organizational perspectives. Ensure that you include employees across the corporate strata such as senior executives, managers, engineers, consultants, and machine learning scientists. Step 2: Provide them with the right tools and training Salesforce research stats on data literacy don’t paint a pretty picture.  Only 35% of the surveyed workforce has received training on data visualization tools and 29% on statistical tools. 27% percent workers say they can interpret data outputs relevant to their job function, and only 26% say they can use that data to make decisions. With proper access to training on technology-driven data analytics, organizations can empower their entire workforce to unlock the power of data to drive decision-making. Step 3: Test your theories on a small scale and iterate Start small, analyze results, refine your theories and iterate. Eventually, a winner will reveal itself when your employees can measure the impact of your project on their bottom line. Step 4: Prioritize the human aspect of your data culture Encourage involvement of all team members in the entire process from setup, testing, fine tuning, to data analytics and its application for decision making. This will ensure that you avoid bias and guesswork which can have a negative long-term impact. Take data at face value to avoid bias by proxy. Let’s consider ZIP codes as an example. At face value, they are just a location indicator. But sometimes ZIP codes can be a proxy for an area’s racial makeup and financial services companies consider ZIP codes in loan applications. Decisions based on this data point must be free of bias. Step 5: Identify areas where AI can derive more value from your data You can start your AI journey at many places, in any department, for any function, or extend it further if you’ve already started. Start small, demonstrate results, and bring everyone on board. Establish guidelines and standards for consistency, security, accountability, and ethics from day one. Ensure completeness and accuracy of your data to make the best use of AI. Incorporating an AI-driven data culture can be a daunting task.  It takes time and effort to bring people on board, retain their interest, and demonstrate results. For most business leaders, this transformation may be a whole new experience. This is where working with a Salesforce Consulting Partner could prove to be very useful. At Girikon, our certified consultants can guide you on this transformational journey of embracing AI with a strong data culture. Contact us today.  Take the next step to build your AI-powered data culture.

One of the primary drivers of research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been to create AI systems that can build viable and powerful computer programs to tackle complex business challenges. Recent developments in this area especially the rapid strides made by Large Language Models (LLMs), have brought about this radical shift in thinking. LLMs were originally developed for comprehending natural language but now they have taken machine intelligence to another level. LLMs can now create code and text, setting a new bar for AI development. Until now, LLMs have been reasonably proficient in handling routine programming tasks. However, they often falter when confronted with complex programming challenges. One of the major stumbling blocks in their use for solving programming problems has been their tendency to generate code blocks as monolithic entities instead of breaking them down into granular, logic-based code blocks with specific functionality. Human developers on the other hand are easily able to create modular code when dealing with complex problems. They tap into their knowledge base of pre-existing modules to accelerate the development of solutions to new problems. Salesforce Research recently introduced CodeChain, a cutting-edge AI framework to bridge this gap. CodeChain leverages a series of self-revisions driven by sub-modules created in earlier iterations to streamline the process of creating modular code. At the core of CodeChain lies the methodology of enabling LLMs to approach problem-solving to create logical subtasks and reusable sub-modules. There are two iterative phases in the sequence of self-revisions in CodeChain. Sub-Module Extraction and Clustering: In this phase, sub-modules are identified by analyzing the code generated by the LLM. Next, these sub-modules are organized into clusters. From each cluster, representative sub-modules are selected which are identified to be more widely applicable and reusable. Prompt Enhancement and Re-Generation: The initial chain-of-thought prompt is further improved and regenerated by integrating the selected representative modules from the previous phase. Next, the LLM is asked to produce new modular code solutions once again. This way, the LLM can leverage the information and understanding from earlier iterations to enhance them further. CodeChain has already been shown to have a significant impact on code generation. Salesforce has indicated that by asking the LLM to enhance and reuse pre-existing sub-modules, the modularity and accuracy of generated solutions are greatly improved. Comprehensive studies have been conducted to investigate deeper into the factors that contribute to CodeChain’s success. These investigations look at aspects like prompting technique, LLM model size, and code quality. The insights from these studies reveal why CodeChain excels in improving the quality and modularity of code generated by LLMs, making it a potential game-changer for AI-powered code generation. CodeChain leverages chain-of-thought prompting to generate modular blocks of code which drives natural selection of the LLM to select parts of the generated solution for reuse and refinement. CodeChain’s release by Salesforce AI marks a key milestone in AI-powered code generation. Its ability to boost modularity and accuracy, along with significant improvements in pass rates indicates a giant leap forward. This disruptive framework is poised to transform the programming landscape, empowering businesses to quickly build and deploy effective solutions. Introducing CodeGen: Turning Prompts Into Code The Salesforce Research team recently announced the launch of CodeGen – a new LLM that leverages conversational AI to generate accurate and modular code.   With CodeGen from Salesforce, both programmers and business users can use natural language prompts to define what they want the code to do such as build an app that throws up the last customer interaction. The LLM translates those prompts into code, effectively creating an app using just written instructions. With CodeGen’s conversational AI capabilities, business and technology teams can eliminate the time and resource-intensive process of building apps from scratch. CodeGen empowers programmers to build apps quickly without much coding, freeing up more time for complex tasks that necessitate a human touch. The CodeGen Solution In simple terms – with CodeGen, all you need to do is describe what you want your code to do in natural language and the machine will write executable code for you. This is the next generational promise of conversational AI programming from CodeGen. It makes coding as easy as talking. Here’s an example to illustrate the power of CodeGen. When you want to eat a certain dish for dinner, you need to know all the ingredients required to make the dish want and then you have to cook it yourself. You need to know the serving size, the proportion of each ingredient, and the steps to follow. Now, let’s say you go to a restaurant powered by CodeGen. You just tell the server what dish you want, and they prepare it and serve it to you. Just describe the dish you want in a short sentence, and it will be served to you without any involvement from you in its creation. You don’t need to specify any ingredients or explain the steps involved in cooking it or provide any other associated instructions. You don’t even need any knowledge of any culinary terms either. The restaurant kitchen behaves like an intelligent entity, converting your plain sentence into a sequence of steps that takes all the ingredients, in the most appropriate proportion and creates the outcome (in your case the dish you asked for). Now imagine, instead of a meal you are “ordering” an app that can perform certain functions. That’s the basic idea behind CodeGen. Salesforce’s implementation of conversational AI programming highlights its commitment to an inclusive approach to software programming to bring it to the masses. AI translates natural language descriptions into fully functional and executable code empowering anyone to build apps even if one has no prior knowledge of programming. According to Salesforce, CodeGen, their LLM which powers conversational AI programming will soon be available as open source to accelerate research. The launch of CodeChain from Salesforce AI is a landmark event for innovators around the globe. With its ability to improve code modularity and accuracy, it can empower IT teams to dramatically accelerate problem-solving.  This disruptive framework is poised to transform the way we approach and solve business problems. To learn more about AI-powered code generation, contact Girikon, a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner today.

Businesses across industries are leveraging emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to power sales, marketing, customer service, HR, and operations. In fact, banking is one of the top industries to embrace Chatbots in recent years to streamline operations and enhance the customer experience. Banking chatbots are AI-powered virtual assistants that can understand customer requests, resolve their queries, and execute transactions. Chatbots are software programs that have in-built machine learning algorithms and can process natural language prompts to automate the relationship between a customer and a bank. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbot developed by Girikon Inc, a Salesforce Development Partner, help banking institutions streamline operations, scale customer service, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. In this article, we will explain what GirikSMS can do for banks and their customers and how bot-driven automation can benefit banking institutions in several ways. Chatbots are cost-efficient. Bots allow you to scale operations quickly without the associated costs of additional manpower. The era of mobile banking. Customers today prefer digital first and the need for on-demand mobile banking is increasing across all age groups. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots are available 24/7 and can be easily integrated into mobile banking apps to offer immediate resolution of customer queries. Customers prefer text. Most smartphone users are well versed with popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Slack, and SMS, using these channels for daily interaction with friends, family, and even businesses. Text conversations over these apps are now the preferred choice for most users. GirikSMS ChatGpt Empowered Salesforce Chatbot uses the power of conversational AI to interact with customers over these popular messaging apps and channels ushering in a new era of digital services. Here’s a look at some of the use cases where GirikSMS APP can help banking institutions automate their day-to-day operations to enhance the customer experience. 1. Onboarding new customers New customers can rely on GirikSMSChatbot for onboarding activities such as: Uploading all required documents and validating them. Sending agreements for review and sending reminders to complete the documentation. Setting up a new account and providing a guided tour of available products and services Downloading and exploring the banking app on users’ mobile phones. GirikSMS ChatGPT Empowered Chatbot can also be used to collect feedback from new customers about the onboarding process for detailed analysis and ongoing improvement. 2. Provide 24/7 customer service GirikSMS Chatbot can be extremely useful in customer service operations. They can resolve routine customer queries quickly and enable banks to scale 24/7 support to customers. They can answer commonly asked questions and provide accurate answers to customer queries quickly without any wait times. Not just that, customers can also modify account information such as an address, all within the chat conversation. 3. Transactions GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can help customers perform banking transactions such as fund transfers or opening a deposit account. GirikSMS is native to Salesforce. So, if a user types the name of a beneficiary to do a fund transfer, the bot can look up the receiver’s account in the CRM and execute the transaction. Some of the other transactions that GirikSMS Salesforce SMS App can help customers with are: Report a missing/damaged card. Report an unauthorized transaction. Change account passwords. Modify account limits or apply for higher limits. Apply for account upgrades like more privileges. Apply for a loan. 4. Providing financial advice GirikSMS  Chatbot can be virtual financial assistants. Based on the customers’ income and spending habits they can recommend saving plans, tax tips, and recommend best-fit banking products. 5. Cross-selling Banks offer a range of products and services such as insurance, loans, mortgages, wealth management, etc. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots leverage CRM data and analyze past customer interactions across multiple channels to make intelligent recommendations about new products that may be relevant to them. 6. Preventing fraud GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots record all interactions with users in the CRM and can use natural language understanding capabilities to detect suspicious behavior to alert agents to take prompt and appropriate action. Data from chatbot conversations can be used to identify patterns and train the chatbot. 7. Onboarding new recruits GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can be used to assist new employees by: Answering their queries about the company’s policies. Providing access via interactive menus to onboarding material such as documents, presentations, charts, photos, or videos. Setting up IT accounts and assisting them with system walkthroughs and privileges. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can also train employees on several aspects of customer communication and engagement. 8. Assisting in internal operations GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can also act as virtual assistants for banking personnel by providing them with quick answers when dealing with customers. They can answer questions related to Policies and regulations. Products and services offered. Intelligent forecasts on customers based on their account status. GirikSMS Chatbots for Salesforce can also help streamline internal operations by sharing documents across team members and facilitating reporting and evaluation processes. 9. Omnichannel availability Customers today prefer digital first. And they engage with brands on multiple channels such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and messenger apps. GirikSMS Chatbot for Salesforce can be easily integrated across all popular channels ensuring that you are available to them 24/7 regardless of where they are. While the above use cases can be a game-changer for banks, it is also important to follow certain best practices to make the most of this disruptive technology offering. Here is our list of 5 best practices for implementing Chatbots. 1. Understand the limitations and challenges of Chatbots Work with your Salesforce partner to have a thorough assessment of the capabilities and limitations of AI Chatbots to set the right expectations. 2. Protect user data Banking institutions must secure and protect the data and information gathered by Chatbots.  Giving confidence to customers that their data is secure with you builds trust and loyalty. 3. Secure transactions Chatbots, especially customer support ones open up opportunities for hackers and fraudsters. You must ensure that all transactions and interactions over bot conversations are encrypted and secure. 4. Create specialized chatbots Banking offers many use cases for deploying Chatbots such as lead generation, sales, and customer service. Start with a simple use case and deploy chatbots in phases. 5. Test extensively An erroneous chatbot can lead to frustrated customers. Test and train your chatbot extensively before going live. As Salesforce expands its boundaries to integrate the disruptive technology of conversational AI and adds more functionality into its platform, you need the support of a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner like Girikon to unlock its true power. Connect with one of our experts today to learn more about how you can harness the power of GirikSMS Chatbots for Salesforce.

As an IT manager, you would have handled several rollouts and migrations, streamlined legacy systems, and upgraded cybersecurity. And now AI is staring you in the face. How ready are you to build AI apps that your business needs? Do you have in-house skills to build and deploy AI apps? Whether you are building a customer service app or a marketing app, you can adopt a systematic approach to going about it. Here are 5 key steps to building effective AI apps for your organization. 1. Define exactly what you want from your app before starting to build one Businesses across industries have started to embrace the disruptive technology of AI for their everyday operations. Your competitors are likely deploying AI chatbots to provide 24/7 automated, intelligent, customer service. But before you start investing time and resources in building AI apps, you need to answer some key questions. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Talk with your business’s leaders. Do you want to boost sales? Improve customer satisfaction score?  As a starting step, clearly define use cases. Next, define the desired end state for each use case. This will help you estimate how much effort is required, who to involve, and whether you have adequate resources. What are your competitors doing? Understand what your competitors are doing with their AI tools and for whom. And how can you innovate further on those ideas? And of course, you need to answer one important question – can you build AI apps in-house? Do you have the necessary skills and experience in your team to do this? Based on the use cases you have identified, will you require generative or predictive AI If you don’t have the skills internally like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, look for partners and ISVs for solutions and do a thorough comparison of their offers and capabilities. 2. Define the perimeter for ethics and security As an IT manager, security, privacy, and accuracy are not alien to you. But AI amplifies the challenges and raises many risks such as bias and toxicity. AI bias: Negative bias can be caused by algorithm error based on human prejudices or false assumptions. The consequence is an AI tool that works in unintended ways. Generative AI can propagate outputs based on errors and further amplify the problem. Toxicity: Abusive language and hurtful comments can appear in AI-generated outputs. Researchers have found that assuming certain personas can amplify the toxicity of the response. Before you start building your AI app, define trust and ethics parameters. Trusted AI should be empowering, and inclusive apart from being responsible and transparent. 3. Good data is the foundation of effective AI apps If you are building generative AI apps, your machine learning models will train on the data that is fed to them. AI machine learning models train on all kinds of data. And that data needs to be clean and free of redundancy. The more data your LLMs can be trained on, the better will be the output of your AI. 4. Choose the right technology for your AI app The technology you select for building your AI depends to a certain extent on your use case. If your app summarizes text, processes language, or a knowledge base, you will need an LLM. Over time, as the LLM learns more about your business and its data, it can make logical interpretations and draw conclusions. Building your own learning model can be expensive. You will need to hire data scientists and engineers with expertise in ML and NLP. While it is a lengthy cycle, if you do decide to take this route, once your team is ready you can take the help of libraries and toolkits and integrate them into your development. Generative AI platforms and libraries ML and DL platforms: Amazon SageMaker and Google Vertex AI have built-in libraries and tools to train your AI model and support multiple programming languages. NLP toolkits: If you are building chatbots or virtual assistants, SpaCy is a great NLP toolkit for Python enthusiasts. OpenAI allows you to customize their GPTs for your apps. Deep learning libraries: If you want to build apps for speech or image recognition, you can look at a deep learning library to find a framework for building, training, and deploying your apps. Open-source libraries such as PyTorch and MXNet can be used in combination depending on your use case. Computer vision libraries: If you want your app to analyze images or video, you can use open-source libraries such as OpenCV and TensorFlow. PyTorch is another option that can be helpful. Building AI apps with CRM data If you want to build customer-interfacing apps, you will need to leverage your customer data. And without all your data in one place, that’s hard to do. You need an enterprise-grade CRM like Salesforce to make your AI app work best for you. You can connect AI models to Salesforce Data Cloud without running into a wall. With the Model Builder (erstwhile called Einstein Studio), you can bring your own model into Salesforce. 5. Build AI apps and start deploying In a recent developers’ survey conducted by Salesforce, it was found that 70% of developers use or intend to use AI for development. The biggest benefit developers see is reduced development cycles. Try AI for code generation Whether you use AI or not for code generation, you can reduce development time with the Einstein 1 platform for Salesforce. Einstein for Developers understands natural language prompts to write code in seconds. The more precise your prompt, the better will be the quality of the code generated. Once the code is generated you can accept, revise, or reject it. Einstein for Developers uses a customized Large Language Model based on the open-source CodeGen AI model from Salesforce. Use an IDE to accelerate development A web-based integrated development environment (IDE) allows your teams to work from anywhere, anytime. You can modify and debug code and maintain source control in one place.  Code Builder, the new IDE from Salesforce is preloaded with frameworks, has built-in integration with Git, and is free for admins and developers. Salesforce also allows you to integrate other IDEs with it. Follow App Lifecycle Management and DevOps practices Building and launching great AI apps need solid processes across stages of app development, along with collaborative tools for developers, data scientists, testers, and project managers. Salesforce has inbuilt AI tools like Einstein for Developers and Prompt Builder to come to your aid. DevOps Center, available on the Einstein 1 platform, can help you to maintain version control, track changes and push your build for UAT and production. If you prefer working with your own tools for IDE, project management, and DevOps, you can bring them into the Salesforce environment. Connect with an AI expert today. With over a decade of experience as a Salesforce Consulting Partner, our experts are always available to guide you through the process and answer any questions you might have regarding the potential of AI in your business.

All businesses without exception, strive to achieve high levels of customer loyalty. And it’s not a surprising fact. Industry data reveals that the cost of retaining existing customers is a mere 20% of acquiring new ones. Businesses recognize that even a 5% improvement in customer retention rates has a significant impact on the top line. With so many options available to customers, going the extra mile to earn their loyalty is a no-brainer in today's fiercely competitive business ecosystem. SMS marketing is perhaps the most underrated yet key driver of customer loyalty. Many businesses today are leveraging SMS marketing to retain customers. The popularity of SMS marketing is increasing at breakneck speed. It provides that elusive silver lining to improve customer engagement and build trust and loyalty. What is Customer Loyalty? The word loyalty is typically associated with an allegiance or bond between two entities. In the business context, customer loyalty characterizes a consistent emotional bond between the business and the customer. Customer loyalty indicates the willingness of customers to engage with the business for its products or services. Achieving customer loyalty can be complex and relies on the synergy of several factors: Emotional connection Quality and consistency of brand engagement Exceptional customer service Customer satisfaction levels Product or service customization Personalized interaction Customer loyalty is a direct result of consistent efforts undertaken by a brand and is usually measured across multiple market metrics such as customer lifetime value, repeat purchases, customer satisfaction score, upsell rates, engagement levels, and more. Loyal customers hold the key to a business's longevity and growth. Industry data indicates that loyal customers are willing to spend 65% more on a brand’s products and services compared to new customers. As the saying goes – 20% of your customers contribute to 80% of your sales. So, the message to marketers is loud and clear: drive customer loyalty to increase profitability. The Role of SMS in Improving Customer Loyalty and Enhancing Retention SMS marketing is a discreet way of engaging customers and establishes an invisible yet strong connect between them and your brand. Industry reports indicate that bulk SMS messaging has a read rate of 98%, as compared to email marketing which hovers around 20% at best. In fact, what’s even more interesting is that SMS messages have a read rate of 97% within the first 15 minutes of receipt, and that's primarily because people check their phones at least a hundred times a day. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that there is solid ground to consider bulk SMS messaging as a powerful driver of customer loyalty. How To Build Customer Loyalty with Bulk SMS Messaging The question still remains how bulk SMS messaging drives customer loyalty? With the right bulk SMS marketing strategy with personalized and relevant messaging content, you can facilitate faster response times.  We recommend these 5 simple steps to improve customer loyalty via bulk SMS messaging. Understand your target audience. Segment your subscribers based on age, gender, demographics, interests, and preferences to set up the foundation to send consistent, relevant, and concise content. Align goals. Establish a clear vision of your SMS marketing goals such as conversion rates, app, website, or social media page traffic, feedback scores, and more. Create strategy-based content. SMS messages have a limitation of 160 characters.  So, every word is worth its weight in gold. Keep your messaging concise and precise. Avoid spamming. Don’t overwhelm your customers with unnecessary or repeat messages. And depending on the time zone you operate in for your SMS messaging, ensure your messages are delivered at a time when customers are most likely to see it. Analyze and improve. Marketing is all about indicators, so make sure you are always on top of key metrics like open rate, click-throughs, conversions, sign-ups, unsubscribes, and ROI. Innovate: Last but not least, bulk SMS marketing allows you to experiment and improve your SMS marketing strategy and adjust it as you go. So be sure to collect feedback from your customers at regular intervals. This not only helps you to improve but also tells your customers you value how they feel about you. Strategies to Increase Customer Retention with SMS While we have talked about some key aspects of improving customer loyalty via bulk SMS messaging, it is equally important to understand some tried and tested implementation strategies that drive customer loyalty: New Customer and Post-Purchase Offers. Offering deals and discounts to new customers is an effective strategy for acquiring them. And once they are on board, new deals and offers based on their initial purchase can be a powerful incentive for them to return to your brand. When offering deals, make sure they are time-bound and send them reminder texts with clickable links to your e-store to nudge them to make a purchase. New Product Announcement. Concise, attention-grabbing SMS texts have proven to be very effective. And if your products or services are hyper-personalized for a particular customer segment, SMS marketing could be very effective in igniting interest. GirikSMS comes with seamless integration with Salesforce, which means you can leverage your CRM data for deep insights into customer behavior and target your SMS marketing perfectly with precise and relevant messaging. Trigger Messaging. This is a very effective way to capture your audience’s attention. Automated SMS messages can be triggered for a range of scenarios such as abandoned cart reminders, the latest personalized discounts, and offers, new product launches or back-in-stock items. Conclusion There is no doubt that SMS texting is a powerful tool for driving customer loyalty and retention. With a market-leading automated SMS platform in place and a sound use-case-based marketing strategy, brands can unlock the power of SMS marketing to improve customer loyalty enhance retention, and pave the way for the long-term success of their business. Try GirikSMS for Improved Customer Loyalty and Retention With GirikSMS, you can implement automated, intelligent marketing strategies at scale with personalized engagement across every interaction. With GirikSMS’s automation capabilities and its intelligent Chatbots, you can be up and running in no time. With GirikSMS you can: Send tailored product alerts Cross-sell and upsell Send reminders Send order updates Resolve customer issues Engage in 2-way conversational messaging Collect customer feedback Start your Free 3 Month Trial today. Still have questions? Connect with one of our SMS experts.

According to Salesforce research, close to 90% of customers say that a business's overall experience is as important as its products or services. In today’s competitive landscape where companies are juggling between staffing shortages and overwhelmed resources, they need to be able to do more with less.  Customer expectations are at an all-time high, and given the plethora of options available to them, anything less than an exceptional experience will lead to customer churn. Automation and self-service technologies have given many businesses across industries a significant improvement in productivity, cost savings, and customer satisfaction. In 2021, Salesforce reported that customers using its Cloud products and self-service tools such as AI chatbots witnessed a 30% increase in customer satisfaction along with a 27% improvement in agent productivity. To meet this ever-growing demand, Salesforce launched Virtual Assistant – an Einstein-powered chatbot solution built specifically for financial services businesses to automate routine customer requests faster across popular digital channels like SMS or messaging platforms. This enables agents to focus on complex cases while chatbots can promptly resolve routine service requests, such as updating credit card information, renewing subscriptions, making payments, modifying subscription plans, and more. Virtual Assistant offers multilingual support, allowing businesses to use a single chatbot across multiple geographic regions regardless of their native language. And in the future, Einstein-powered Virtual Assistants will automatically create support articles based on customer conversations. Salesforce Chatbots for financial services come with pre-built bot templates, leading to faster setup and deployment. They can streamline support and assist agents with routine questions such as “How do I calculate my tax?” or “How do I upgrade my insurance plan?” With Virtual Assistant, financial services companies can re-direct thousands of customer calls to the Salesforce Chatbot leading to significant cost savings. Salesforce Chatbots can handle thousands of concurrent conversations for queries such as loan application status, product information, insurance premium renewal, claim filing, technical support, and more, freeing up dozens of front-line agents. Salesforce Chatbots improve the customer experience by enabling seamless self-service for simple tasks, thereby significantly reducing wait times to speak with an agent. The rewards of embracing self-service technology can be substantial, and businesses need to leverage technology to scale quickly and deliver efficient customer service. Features of Salesforce ChatBots Salesforce Chatbots powered by Einstein are equipped with advanced features to solve customer issues by replying to their questions and understanding their behavior to evolve continuously. Here are some stand-out features of Salesforce Chatbots that you should be aware of before you hire a Salesforce Development Partner for its implementation. Natural Language Processing (NLP) Salesforce Chatbots use NLP to understand customer intent and provide relevant answers. This makes bot interactions more natural for customers. Multi-Channel Support Salesforce Chatbots can be deployed on multiple channels such as mobile apps, websites, online stores, social media pages, and on popular messaging platforms like WhatsApp and SMS. This allows customers the convenience and flexibility to interact with businesses on their preferred channels whenever they want. Personalization Salesforce Chatbots can personalize responses based on customer data, their preferences, past purchases, and browsing behavior, making every interaction more relevant and meaningful. Contextual Conversations Salesforce Chatbots can understand and maintain context across multiple conversations regardless of the channel, thereby providing more accurate and relevant responses to customer queries. Integration with Salesforce Salesforce Chatbots are built on the world’s leading CRM platform, allowing for seamless integration with other Salesforce cloud products. With Salesforce Chatbots, managing customer data has never been easier. Analytics and Insights With Salesforce Chatbots, businesses can get valuable insights into customer behavior. By analyzing customer interactions, Salesforce Chatbots can help businesses identify areas for improvement to enhance the customer experience. Continuous Learning Salesforce Chatbots leverage machine learning algorithms to learn continuously from every interaction and better their responses over time, improving the accuracy and relevance of responses as they gain more experience. Here are some generic features of Salesforce Chatbots. Re-direct bot conversations to human agents for complex customer queries. Understand the intent of customer queries. Rapid response times. Understand customer input and recognize errors. Available 24/7. Lead generation – collect customer data and qualify leads for sales teams. Scale customer service with personalized automation and connected customer data According to Salesforce, new features in Financial Services Cloud such as proactive service and call deflection will enable financial services firms to reduce operating expenses while delivering exceptional customer service experiences: In 2021, Salesforce customers reported a 27% increase in case resolution with self-service automation and AI-powered Chatbots (Virtual Assistant). Salesforce Chatbots automate routine request resolution across popular messaging channels such as SMS and WhatsApp, so agents can spend more time on cases that necessitate human intervention. With Customer Service Coordination, agents can collaborate in Slack to fast-track case resolution. With automated workflows and custom Chatbots, Customer Service Coordination gathers customer data and generates alerts in a central Slack channel allowing teams to respond to critical incidents faster like fraud incidents, executing time-sensitive trades, and claims processing. With the Customer Data Platform, financial services marketing teams can unify customer data from multiple sources with a point-and-click interface. This enables marketing teams to engage with customers across multiple channels such as web, email, mobile, and social media in a far more personalized way.  With Salesforce Chatbots, enhanced Insights, and Data Actions, one-on-one advisor interactions and transactions can be triggered in real time. A unified console with actionable insights and workflows for faster service New features in Salesforce Financial Services Cloud include AI-powered dashboards and Chatbots to deliver key insights: With Intelligent Agent Desktop, agents can get access to deeper customer insights from right within the console page. With Customer Identity Verification, agents can reduce the risk of fraud, and with Customer Record Alerts, Chatbots can serve up issues that customers may not be aware of when they initiate a conversation. With Analytics for Financial Services, financial services businesses can interpret customer data with insights for faster and better decision-making, eventually delivering more revenue, and strengthening customer engagement. Girikon has been a Salesforce Consulting Partner for over a decade providing unique and scalable solutions for the financial services industry. We have the necessary expertise in-house to deliver tailored experiences to every customer through self-service, automation, and AI to improve efficiency across your business. Contact us today to learn more about how Salesforce Chatbots can transform your financial services business.

Chatbots are making their way into almost every industry known to man. With businesses recognizing the value of automating repetitive tasks, it is only a matter of time before we witness a large-scale adoption of Chatbots across industries and businesses. One of the interesting things about Chatbots is that they can be programmed to accomplish different tasks for different industries. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbot, developed by Girikon, a Salesforce Implementation Partner for over a decade, helps businesses across industries automate tasks, streamline operations, scale quickly, and reduce overall costs while improving efficiency. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots are powered by AI and machine learning and leverage Salesforce CRM data to deliver personalized best-in-class customer experiences at scale. While it is impossible to detail each and every scenario where GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can come in handy, this blog gives an overview of how you can leverage GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots for your business success. And our chatbots are self-learning, which means they get better with every interaction. Here are some use cases for GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots. CONSUMER GOODS AND RETAIL Customers spend a lot of time navigating through menus and category pages to find the one product they want to buy. And if this discovery process is too long or something else grabs their attention, many of them abandon their carts. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can help compress this product discovery journey for customers. GirikSMS Chatbots give customers easy access to product information and give smart product recommendations based on their past purchases. Not only that, GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can also generate discount coupons and offers on the fly for customers who have abandoned their carts, to nudge them to complete the purchase. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots are a great tool for sales and marketing teams.  Chatbots assist sales and marketing reps by leveraging CRM data and providing real-time reports and alerts. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can help teams with personalized customer information and serve up highly accurate, timely, and relevant data to help them move leads faster through the sales funnel. FINANCIAL SERVICES You have likely interacted with a chatbot while dealing with your bank for routine queries or operations such as fund transfers, balance inquiries, approvals, and more. The financial services industry is one of the early adopters of Chatbots. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can be used by financial services businesses to improve customer satisfaction and engagement. For instance, banks can use GirikSMS Chatbots to interact with customers for routine queries such as account balance, bank statements, fund transfers, starting an investment plan, investment advice, and much more. Insurance companies can use GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots for offering automated services such as premium renewal, plan upgrades, claims processing, educating customers on technical terms, sending alerts and reminders, and more. And this is on the customer interface. Financial services businesses can also use GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots to perform several routine and repetitive internal operational tasks such as contract review and analysis, sorting, segmenting and qualifying applications, employee engagement, IT ticket management, and more. HEALTHCARE GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can be very useful for healthcare businesses.  They can perform routine tasks for receptionists and nursing staff such as checking supplies inventory, posting requests for supplies and medicines, managing appointments and home visits, assisting doctors with patient reports, track post-op recovery, managing appointment calendars, and much more. MANUFACTURING The manufacturing sector has always struggled with communication gaps in day-to-day operations. Manufacturing companies have to deal with a dynamic supply chain of wholesalers and distributors and need them to be in sync with their assembly line. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can help manufacturing companies connect all constituents and facilitate seamless interaction. Vendor management, shift management, and product-related assistance are some of the areas where GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can be useful in the manufacturing industry. HOSPITALITY GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can used to provide better guest experiences, acting as a virtual concierge and assistant for hospitality businesses. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots are available 24/7 to provide best-in-class service that improves customer loyalty and satisfaction. AVIATION GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots bots can be used by the aviation industry to book, re-schedule, or cancel tickets, plan travel, send reminders, notifications, and announcements, assist with web check-ins, provide flight options based on customer preferences, and assist with other travel arrangements. EDUCATION GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots work seamlessly with Education Cloud to deliver exceptional experiences to students, faculty, and staff. For students, GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can automate many tasks within the recruitment and admissions process, providing assistance to students, conducting surveys and polls, engaging with parents and building trust and confidence, managing advisor appointments, updating students on campus happenings, assisting in course enrolment, submission of assignments and more. For faculty, GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can assist with scheduling special classes, setting up virtual advisory sessions, managing assignments, tracking student progress, and much more. OIL AND GAS GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can be used by oil and gas companies to improve productivity and reduce worker risk. They can provide real-time customer support by providing information about the company's products.           UTILITIES GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and leverage CRM data to interact with customers via chat. They can help utility customers with assisted meter readings, and payment issues, provide real-time customer service, and escalate urgent and complex issues to relevant personnel. Customers can easily report outages by sending a word like “outage” to a pre-defined number and receive regular updates about case resolution. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can track and monitor KPIs to ensure customer service excellence. REAL ESTATE GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can engage in a conversation with home buyers the moment they click on an ad on land on the company's web page. They can help home buyers with more details about available properties, provide guided virtual walk-throughs, schedule site visits, check for mortgage options, analyze market trends, and collect feedback and preferences. GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can be deployed on all popular channels such as mobile apps, social media, websites, or messengers such as SMS and WhatsApp, ensuring 24/7 availability to customers. While sales, marketing, and customer service are some of the common areas that Chatbots are being used today, GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can be used in any scenario regardless of the industry, not just for the use cases listed above.  If you are a business owner or represent senior management, it is important for you to identify a use case that can deliver great ROI. Have more questions on how GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots can transform your day-to-day operations and take you on the path to success? Get in touch with our expert today to know more about the use of GirikSMS Salesforce Chatbots in your industry.