Executive Summary
Background
Challenge
When Proservice Hawaii account managers prepare for a key customer meeting, they need an accurate, 360-degree view of the account and a clear picture of its health across every service the organization uses. Though the company’s Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) system includes a wealth of data, account teams needed to comb through cases, emails, and phone records to obtain exactly what they needed. Some tried to work around this time-consuming, inefficient process by reaching out to their product line colleagues for verbal updates – but that taxed other staff unnecessarily and relied too much on memory.
“Salesforce had rolled out new Copilot features that could summarize records using generative AI,” said Jason Morita, product owner, Service Enablement. “We thought that could be a better way to equip account managers with the data needed for productive discussions.”
However, the account teams had varied levels of technical aptitude using generative AI tools, so ProService couldn’t expect them to query Copilot themselves and get precisely what they required. On the other hand, the company couldn’t tie up internal Salesforce administrators for months learning how to deploy this new capability to deliver a hands-off solution.
Solution
Mastek was already providing ProService with Salesforce administration support, so the vendor was a natural fit for this project. “We discovered that Mastek had deep experience building APIs between a company’s Salesforce data and its AI solution of choice,” Morita said. “They took the reins and got it done quickly,” enabling ProService to stay focused on other important work.
Mastek completed the project in two months in the spring of 2024, deploying the Salesforce Einstein Copilot action with the newest Salesforce gen AI technology to develop targeted prompts that yield highly usable account insight summaries. Mastek built the prompt to summarize the last 30 days of data – the optimal timeframe for generating accurate, targeted information in this scenario. The ProService Salesforce team refreshes these summaries every weekend, so account managers and service line leaders can access up-to-date insights each Monday morning.
“Mastek got us 90% of the way there, then we did minor tweaking to optimize the prompts’ usability,” Morita said. Account teams can use the new tool in managing almost their entire book of business, minus a handful of accounts with data sets too large to summarize this way.
Account Health At-a-Glance
The AI-generated summaries deliver insights on the questions an account manager or service line leader is most likely to have when preparing for key account meetings. Carefully crafted prompts ensure the summary is concise-just two or three paragraphs-yet comprehensive, covering everything required for an effective conversation.
“They have better visibility into their accounts, with more intelligence across the entire relationship,” Morita pointed out. Along with key statistics like account size, tier, and profit generated, the summary provides a holistic picture of the account’s health, with details like the top cases with the most email interactions and key pain points. “It can even tell us if a competitor’s name keeps coming up,” he said.
More Time for Strategy and Execution
The ability to access an accurate, 360-degree view of an account allows teams to make the most of their time and move to action faster.
“Because they trust that the information is directionally correct, they spend less time compiling data and more time developing a strategy for engaging the customer effectively,” Morita explained. “The AI-generated summary allows them to approach the conversation with more intelligence, without spending more total time.” No longer bogged down by time-consuming manual data gathering, end users typically get 80% of the way there with the account summary. Then they spend a fraction of the time they used to on supplemental research to get the remaining 20% of insights they need.
That means ProService account teams are engaging with troubled accounts sooner to conduct a rescue interaction, moving to action quickly. And they’re approaching key customer meetings with a strategic plan of action, rooted in reliable data. “They can immediately see if they need to bring in a subject matter expert and ensure they project a united front,” he added.
Presenting the Facts, Without Bias
The AI-generated summary helps focus customer interactions for the greatest impact by bringing the facts of the relationship to the forefront, without the natural biases that an account manager might introduce.
“Account managers sometimes focus only on one area that’s been a problem in the past, but the customer might be having other issues that need attention,” Morita said. By providing data-driven insights derived from all the available information, the new summaries eliminate bias from the process and enable account teams to engage customers more effectively.
Based on the success of this effort, ProService is eager to leverage the Salesforce gen AI capability in other ways. The next likely application is sales coaching.
“We’re determining if we can leverage the AI prompt to build a coaching strategy that helps our sales teams plan for calls and meetings with customer opportunities,” Morita said. With guidance on the messages that would most resonate with a prospect, the ProService salesforce could become even more effective at closing deals.