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by Jordan Wilton on October 7, 2024
To make digital marketing more efficient than ever before, HubSpot and Salesforce are putting all their eggs in the AI basket, specifically, in the form of AI agents.
At this year’s INBOUND conference, HubSpot announced that their new AI agent rollouts will be the new apps, helping businesses identify leads, nurture them, and close deals with less human energy.
Similarly, Salesforce hyped their own AI agents, courtesy of their powerful Einstein AI platform.
It’s all part of the third wave of AI that is coming through to change the way we work with generative AI that goes beyond simply pulling data and spitting it out.
For CRM users and project managers alike, these technological waves are good news because their objectives are to take over the busy work that may only take minutes a day, but insidiously distracts from ever-important brain power and productivity.
Riding the 3 AI Waves
The first wave rolled out in the form of predictive AI, which project management tools, for example, have already had in the wheelhouse for years.
Predictive AI for project management can tell you when a project will go off rails, and with CRMs, it gives you the probability of whether or not a lead will become a customer.
The second wave, generative AI, is rooted in the LLMs that are used by millions in Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.
Generative AI at present is used within HubSpot, Salesforce, and even some project management tools like Trello to create content: everything from blog posts to detailed SOWs for big projects.
This newer, third wave manifests itself in the form of more autonomous AI agents that can carry out more tasks on their own.
In a nutshell, if we look at the first wave as AI for iteration, the second would be more ideation, and then the third wave is that of taking action.
AI agents are able to carry out processes that require more than one step, much like a personal assistant in the digital world.
So now, instead of just statistically predicting outcomes and creating content based on human input, AI agents will be able to accomplish those tasks autonomously:
AI agents will run once you give them an objective or a stimulus to trigger their behavior. Depending on the complexity of the agent system, it will use its processors to consider the problem, understand the best way to solve it, and then take action to close the gap to the goal. While you may define rules to have it gather your feedback and additional instructions at certain points, it can work by itself.
Let’s do a quick breakdown of what users can expect from the new AI agents at HubSpot and Salesforce to assist with sales, marketing, and more:
HubSpot AI Agents: Breeze
HubSpot Breeze is designed to be ridiculously easy, hence the name. It offers a co-pilot that uses conversational triggers to figure out what you need, and then execute tasks within the HubSpot platform.
The Breeze AI agents take execution to the next level by operating within their own subsets to keep HubSpot users organized and on task while taking care of the items in their digital jurisdiction.
With Breeze, you can have a content agent, a prospecting agent, and a customer agent. But the social media agent is perhaps one of the biggest game changers that can now automate all that tedious work for forward-facing service businesses that need to respond and engage with users.
Now, that time-suck is no longer an annoying force to be reckoned with day in and day out.
Beyond engaging with users on social media, the Breeze AI agents can edit all marketing materials, from podcasts to long-form blog posts, and even create entire campaigns.
Breeze agents can also go on research deep dives for you, pulling out the most pressing information to nurture leads.
The Buyer Intent feature for sales teams is particularly powerful because it can identify those anonymous users who are visiting your site but not pulling the trigger to purchase.
Using highly useful behavioral data, helps sales professionals better pinpoint future customers and provide the best possible routes for engaging with them.
Salesforce AI Agents: Einstein Platform
Salesforce’s AI agents can help businesses in a similar way to Breeze, but in a more scalable, enterprise-friendly environment. The largest use case is to deploy agents to schedule appointments and answer questions for customers while you stay focused on higher-level work.
AI agents from Salesforce offer next-level customization with an included agent builder where you can essentially tailor your digital assistance to the tee and test it seamlessly before you deploy it organization-wide.
Salesforce’s AI agents operate within the following subsets: sales, service, marketing, and commerce. IT firms will particularly love the service AI features that can potentially remove hours of busy work each week.
For example, you can use the agents to offer super-personalized service based on data-rich processes without lifting a finger. The most-used actions don’t come with data requirements, meaning that most Salesforce will be able to leverage them from the jump.
Another cool feature of these Salesforce AI agents is the prompt builder, a dream for enterprise businesses to supercharge productivity.
By generating customized prompt templates from internal CRM data as well as any integrated tools, you can help teams complete tasks faster by providing automatic prompts that summarize the task and then can even create content to complete that task with just a few clicks. This is extremely useful for enterprise teams because it can put everyone on the same page for automation, regardless of where or when they’re logging hours.
What’s the learning curve?
AI agents are supposed to be this great advancement that will help us work smarter, not harder. But if they’re too difficult to set up and use, it defeats some of that purpose by having to train employees instead of training the agents within the system.
HubSpot’s Breeze is the winner of the two in that regard, as it’s easier to figure it out and get started. Smaller teams and mid-level organizations are the users for whom Breeze is best suited at this point.
On the other hand, enterprise businesses have more work on their hands with customizing the AI that’s built into Salesforce’s Einstein platform. That’s not to suggest that Einstein is inferior to Breeze, simply that larger businesses innately require more intention with the setup because there are more employees and customers to contend with.
With Einstein, you’ll need to go through with a fine-tooth comb each of the agent’s capabilities and what you’ll choose to leverage before you can jump right in.
How Users Are Currently Leveraging CRM AI Agents
As more and more users onboard AI agents in the Salesforce and HubSpot platforms, we’re bound to discover countless new ways to leverage them in specific scenarios to increase efficiency and productivity.
At present, here’s how users are putting AI to good use in their respective CRMs:
HubSpot businesses are using ChatSpot to act like a sales and marketing assistant to communicate with customers in a way that doesn’t feel as much like a traditional chatbot.
This AI feature interacts with contacts based on their pre-existing data and then feeds the conversations back into the CRM data to build out a more complete customer profile.
HubSpot businesses also love using Breeze to create personalized content, optimize the prospecting process, and uncover and execute SEO strategies.
Salesforce businesses most often use its powerful AI forecasting that helps decision-makers visualize complex data in the blink of an eye. Like HubSpot, users are leveraging AI agents for useful content creation, but with more scalability and personalization than ever before.
