It seems like every day brings news of a new AI platform designed to supercharge the way we work. But what AI apps are people actually implementing to improve their productivity? In this post, we’ll share some of the tools we and our clients are using most. We’ll also explore which of Salesforce’s AI functions our clients have started to adopt and see real value from.
Four AI Tools Driving Real Business Use Cases
1. Cursor – Code Writing Help
Cursor is a leader in the AI coding space for developers/engineering teams. Dev teams are reducing the time spent troubleshooting syntax, freeing developers to focus more on strategic problem-solving and less on routine coding.
2. Gong – AI B2B Sales/Revenue
Gong was an early player in the call recording space, and they’ve grown their offerings as the company expanded. They have some great AI enabled features that can comb through sales team calls for coaching tips and deal intelligence (e.g., predicting which calls may lead to closed deals faster than others).
3. Zapier – Connecting Systems & Workflow Agents
Zapier has also been around for a while. They started out producing AI-powered automation tools that connect different systems and create “triggers” or “zaps.” Recently, Zapier has begun allowing more “agentic” motions in the connection between systems and based on triggers. For example, if a new lead fills out your web form, an agent can notify your representative via Slack, do research, and create the first email for that rep to send to the new lead.
4. Otter.ai – Optimizing Meeting Efficiency
There are many options in the AI note-taking space, but Otter.ai is our personal favorite at DCS. We like the structured notes it creates after meetings, either automatically or after being fed the audio files.
Choosing Among LLMs
At DCS, we’ve experimented with the “Big Three” LLM models:
- Anthropic/Claude
- OpenAI/ChatGPT
- Google/Gemini
Our team has played around to see which one proves better at different use cases, but there’s no clear-cut, all-around winner. Although each platform is great at answering questions, we’ve found that despite all the hype, they’re not great at content generation. It’s fairly obvious that whatever they create has been made by AI. (For the record: This post was NOT created by AI!)
But we have found great value in Google’s Notebook LM and Vertex. Notebook LM comes with Google Business accounts. It’s a tool that lets you create a data library for Google Gemini. You can ask specific questions and it will answer using those data artifacts. For example, if you’re working on a proposal, you could pull together 5 to10 files just for that prospect, upload them to Notebook, and ask Gemini to help improve your pitch.
Vertex lets you build out agents in the Google Cloud platform. These agents can help you with things like onboarding employees or creating a knowledge base “agent” that can answer questions for your team about internal tools or processes if you have the proper documentation already.
Getting the Best ROI from Salesforce’s AI
If you’ve seen any of the 8 million Matthew McConaughey commercials, you know that Salesforce is pushing AI hard and investing heavily in Data Cloud & Agentforce. That said, we’re seeing the most adoption and early ROI on the AI layer within Service Cloud. The agent products are proving super helpful in handling routine cases, particularly when you have a solid knowledge library.
What’s the Best AI for Your Organization?
Curious about how to integrate AI to streamline and optimize your workflows? Thinking about Salesforce projects—AI or otherwise—for the upcoming year? We’re always up to discuss emerging technologies and practical applications tailored to your organization’s unique needs. Send us a note and we’ll set up a call.
MAJOR NOTE, please make sure the above tools approach to data works with your company’s privacy/security. We’re happy to talk to each, but not every tool has the same approach to data & how they use it for training in the future.