IBM-Salesforce partnership combines Watson and Einstein for customer service

Naming each other as preferred providers, IBM and Salesforce have expanded a strategic partnership that focuses on delivering deeper insights, doubling down on artificial intelligence.

Building on a joint solutions partnership that was announced in March 2017 and serves more than 4,000 customers, the collaboration allows users to automate processes by building custom trigger actions depending on how the artificial intelligence interprets a customer-service call or chat.

The program then offers real-time suggestions for responses to customer queries, with the intention of meeting the mutual goals of the caller and customer-service rep.

Users will also gain access to the cognitive computing power of Watson with the development of IBM Watson Quip Live Apps, a component of a feature that was launched at Dreamforce in November. 

With data integration playing a larger role in improving speed to market and customer experiences, tools that rely on AI for predictive response marketing have grown in prominence.

It is unclear what the partnership means for the relationships Salesforce has with Google and Oracle in the space of cloud services.