Another busy week for the customer experience and service sector has seen fresh capabilities from Salesforce, a HubSpot acquisition, Microsoft retiring its Viva Goals solution, and an “industry-first” Teams integration from Five9.
Here are the extracts from some of our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Salesforce Expands Service Cloud with Employee Service
Salesforce has expanded Service Cloud to support a new type of service: Employee Service.
In doing so, the tech giant has added an HR solution – named “Employee Service” – to the CRM app.
Employee Service provides a service console for HR, which comes with an employee portal.
Essentially, this portal is an employee’s one-stop shop for HR. As such, staff can receive immediate answers to their questions with GenAI, connect to HR specialists from any channel, and initiate tasks like requesting paid time off (PTO).
Meanwhile, HR teams may leverage the service console to unify information sources, offer AI-driven support, and automate particular employee experiences.
Sharing the news in a LinkedIn post, Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM for Service Cloud, said:
This new solution unifies employee data, case details, and a company’s corporate knowledge base all in one workspace that gives HR teams a 360-degree view of each employee and the ability to manage employee support cases with built-in AI and productivity tools.
Ultimately, Salesforce hopes to eliminate the use of various point solutions in HR and prevent employees from searching multiple sources – including email, the internet, their collaboration platform, disparate knowledge bases, etc. – for HR-related tasks (Read on…).
HubSpot to Roll Up Frame AI, Boost Its Conversational Data Capabilities
HubSpot has reached an agreement to acquire Frame AI, the conversational intelligence provider.
Frame AI will bolster HubSpot’s data-handling capabilities across its platform, which includes its various CRM applications.
Yamini Rangan, CEO of Hubspot, described the move as “an important step” in the company’s goal of maximizing the potential of AI.
The CEO also believes that Frame AI’s technology has the ability to “transform” its customers’ unstructured data.
Indeed, the tool analyzes and extracts information from emails, calls, meetings, and conversations to deliver real-time insights and practical recommendations.
In doing so, it empowers businesses to predict customer needs and evolve their experiences.
“AI is only as powerful as the data behind it. While structured data has long been the foundation of CRM, unstructured data – like conversations – holds the key to deeper insights into customer sentiment, behavior, and intent,” Rangan explained (Read on…).
Microsoft Scraps Viva Goals, Gives Customers a Year to Move Off the App
Microsoft has confirmed plans to scrap its Viva Goals solution on December 31, 2025.
In a nutshell, the solution allows businesses to track progress toward organizational goals, aligning teams in the process.
Viva Goals has proven popular amongst some CX management teams, allowing them to integrate data and reporting tools, dashboard progress towards critical outcomes, and share updates with business leaders.
Nonetheless, Microsoft has decided to scrap the solution, giving users a year’s notice to move off the app.
In doing so, customers may embrace competitive solutions like Profit.co, Lattice, or Asana.
To support customers in moving to such a platform, Microsoft is providing migration options via API, Excel, and PowerPoint.
However, it didn’t recommend a replacement offering when announcing the move in a company web post (Read on…).
Five9 Introduces ‘Industry-First’ Microsoft Teams Contact Center Integration
Five9 has launched an ‘industry-first’ Microsoft Teams UC integration that displays real-time presence statuses to Five9 agents and Teams users.
With the ability to see whether co-workers are available, it can streamline communications between agents and back-office experts, as they can transfer calls with greater confidence.
As a result, the CCaaS provider Five9 points out that customers will ultimately benefit from faster resolution times.
Jim Hickey, Senior Vice President of Products at Five9, commented on the new partner integration: “Five9’s partnership with Microsoft revolves around offering customers best-in-class solutions that integrate seamlessly.
“With this enhancement, organizations can transform the way they deliver customer experience.
We’re proud to be the first in the market to deliver a pre-built bi-directional presence feature with Microsoft Teams.
“Our joint customers can now enjoy a complete connection between the contact center and back-office subject matter experts.”
Previously, back-office experts using Teams would not know the presence status of agents; only agents would have that visibility (Read on…).
