It is a truth widely acknowledged that growth-oriented organisations are embracing AI because it drives productivity, resolves customer enquiries faster and produces time and cost savings. Increasingly, it is also being used to drive sales thanks to personalised, predictive and proactive engagement, with deep context sourced from data within and accessible to the enterprise.
The need for a connected and unified service ecosystem is becoming more pronounced among busy teams with burgeoning channels and data. Building a unified view of the customer allows for more personalised customer interactions. It also creates new opportunities to not only meet the rising expectations of customers – but proactively anticipate them.
Connected systems are crucial, according to the newly released Salesforce State of Service report. It found that companies that have integrated their service channel data in one unified platform are 1.4 times more likely to call their AI implementation ‘very successful’ compared to those with siloed systems. Still, siloed systems remain a perennial problem for many service leaders.
Managing and navigating numerous and disparate systems poses a challenge for many organisations when implementing AI, according to the Seventh State of Service report. However, this presents a significant opportunity for Australian organisations looking to leverage AI’s advantages for customer and employee experience in 2025 and beyond.
But organisations need to move at pace.
hipages, an Australian online marketplace that connects homeowners with tradies, used Salesforce Data 360 to eliminate its data siloes, which had slowed its customer service as teams needed to navigate between multiple systems. After implementation, hipages had a solid foundation to launch Agentforce – the agentic layer of the Salesforce platform – which reduced the turnaround time for onboarding verification checks from three hours to near real-time with the help of an AI agent.
Similarly, student accommodation company, Scape, was on a mission to provide its customers with a more seamless digital experience. The Australian-born business was poised for growth, and constantly striving to offer exceptional customer service for incoming students around the clock. Scape implemented Salesforce with Agentforce, connecting sales, service, marketing and external systems via MuleSoft in one place to better manage peak periods, when approximately 40,000 customer interactions can come in. Now, frequently asked questions can be answered by an AI agent or seamlessly escalated to a service representative. Scape also saw a 25% reduction in average handling times for support cases thanks to a unified customer view.
According to the Seventh State of Service report, fewer than 30% of organisations in Australia and New Zealand have a single unified platform for technology across customer service channels. Fewer than 30% have integrated customer service and marketing technology.
“To win the AI game, an enterprise needs to be connected, orchestrated, and enabled,” said David Stone, Regional Vice President, Service Cloud and Revenue Cloud at Salesforce.
“This is what allows immediate and accurate context to be delivered to human and digital workers so that they can act with confidence. This challenge also includes the capability to generate and enable processes to deliver the outcomes or services the customer requires, at speed,” said Stone.
Stone said for enterprises to win in a rapidly evolving AI landscape, the unification of service channel data is best combined with four key pillars working in harmony with one another in an organisation.
Data and Knowledge
“Organisations that understand their customers best and act the fastest will prevail in this AI-driven era”, said Stone. The Seventh State of Service report found organisations clearly see the value that AI brings, and how it can help them deal with challenges such as rising customer expectations and demands. They also recognise AI can help their teams become more efficient and productive.
But organisations must also be ‘data ready’ for AI to be implemented successfully. If an organisation’s data is not substantial or inaccessible, for example, AI cannot be effective. To address this, organisations must build a unified customer profile that can be viewed and understood with speed and accuracy. For example, a unified customer profile connects data from across Salesforce as well as external data lakes like Snowflake with Data 360 zero-copy integration, allowing AI to proactively make recommendations to customers, as well as assisting employees to deliver more well rounded service. This in turn, helps service representatives and AI agents serve customers better.
Culture Matters
An organisational culture of innovation and growth provides a solid foundation for effective and successful AI implementation. “Technology is not a silver bullet,” added Stone. “To move at the pace that this technology demands, organisations need to embrace constant innovation, and have the foresight to consider the opportunities AI also presents. In these contexts, the benefits of AI, such as increased productivity, will materialise faster.”
It is also vital to bring employees on the AI implementation journey from the start. “Employees should be part of every step,” said Stone. “Leaders must consistently communicate the vision and goals with transparency and training”.
Choose Your Partners Wisely
AI implementation requires investments in human capital as teams upskill and reskill, as well as in technology infrastructure. Organisations can move with speed, however the most successful will be those that embrace agility and constant iteration. This approach supports both extending the use of agentic technology across businesses, as well as maximising – and unlocking – the true value of agentic AI.
Selecting a partner with proven innovative and collaborative credentials is critical – one who will also support and unlock orchestration and enablement in the short and long term. The right partner should support your organisation, innovate, implement and scale as you navigate the AI journey at every stage.
Operational Excellence
AI is best implemented when it is underpinned by operational excellence, including top-notch workforce management and quality assurance. The greatest return on AI investments is realised when the technology is used to solve a specific and known business problem or opportunity. Organisations can start with simple use cases that can be used to prove the value AI affords. Then, organisations can use proof points to build toward greater impact and value creation.
To learn more, download the Seventh State of Service report here.
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