From the launch of a new autonomous AI agent platform to another big acquisition in the CRM space, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
HubSpot Introduces Agent.AI: The “Only” Network of AI Agents
HubSpot has introduced a network of autonomous AI agents: Agent.AI.
The network will host AI agents for marketing, sales, customer service, and operations teams.
With the platform, these teams may soon scope autonomous agents, add them to their Smart CRM, and implement them so they work side-by-side with staff.
Further down the line, HubSpot will also offer businesses an Agent Builder to devise, develop, and deploy custom Agents.
The announcement came during last week’s INBOUND 2024 event, where HubSpot also announced Breeze, a solution that embeds new AI capabilities across its CRM apps.
Excited by the prospect of Agent.AI, Dharmesh Shah, Co-Founder & CTO of HubSpot, told the crowd:
Agent.AI is the number one professional network for AI agents… it’s also the only professional network for AI agents.
“Some of you might be wondering: “Why do AI agents need their own professional network?” Reasonable question. I predict that in the future, teams will be hybrid—consisting of humans like you and AI agents.”
That prediction echoes Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s take on the future of CX, as he unveiled the Agentforce Platform last week. (Read on…).
Google Introduces a Customer Engagement Suite to Fuse CCaaS & Gemini
Google has launched a new contact center offering: the Customer Engagement Suite with Google AI.
The announcement came during its Gemini at Work event, where Google explained how it will combine its CCaaS and Conversational AI solutions within one suite.
The suite will also leverage Gemini 1.5 Flash – the latest version of Google’s large language model (LLM) – to deliver embedded GenAI capabilities.
With that first-party LLM, Google strives to offer contact center teams faster, more cost-effective GenAI innovation.
Finally, the suite supports an ecosystem of third-party offerings, including CRM, WEM, and telephony solutions, with Google enabling a bring-your-own telephony (BYOT) approach.
Celebrating the launch of the Customer Engagement Suite, Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Applied AI at Google Cloud, stated in a blog post: “As new generative AI capabilities are demonstrating increasingly larger value for customer service operations, we are combining the rich features of Contact Center AI with our latest generative AI technology to deliver a new application.” (Read on…).
Salesforce Agrees a $430MN Deal for Zoomin, the Knowledge Unification Company
Salesforce has agreed to acquire Zoomin, the knowledge unification and data management solutions provider.
Numerous reports suggest that the acquisition is worth $430MN.
It comes after the two brands teamed up earlier this year to launch Salesforce Unified Knowledge, powered by Zoomin.
Unified Knowledge pulls third-party data into Salesforce, whether it’s in a file share, cloud storage, or systems like JIRA.
From there, customers can ground their Einstein AI deployments – across the Salesforce platform – to optimize their performance.
The graphic below visualizes this process.
Now, by acquiring Zoomin, Salesforce aspires to augment Data Cloud with those knowledge unification capabilities so it can support AI implementations beyond Einstein.
Critically, that includes Agentforce, the autonomous AI agent platform that Salesforce formerly launched at Dreamforce 2024. (Read on…).
Meta Goes All In on Virtual Agents with Embedded Ads & Celebrity Voices
Meta has added the capability to embed virtual agents within adverts posted on its social media platforms.
As such, customers may lay a click-to-message link over their ads, which will direct the consumer to a bot-driven experience, either on Messenger or WhatsApp.
From there, if it doesn’t fulfil their needs, the customer can escalate to a live business rep.
In June, Meta introduced these virtual agents for Messenger and WhatsApp as part of an AI solutions suite targeting marketing teams.
Now, as announced at the Meta Connect 2024 developer conference, companies can start to implement them to engage with customers, offer support, and facilitate orders.
The ability to connect the experience, from a social post – be it on Facebook, Instagram, or maybe even Threads – to a potential commerce journey may make these bots much more appealing.
Moreover, the move aids Meta’s long-term ambition to turn WhatsApp into a platform for not only finding and messaging businesses but buying from them, too. (Read on…).
