Latest news with #ServiceCloud
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Salesforce, NICE Expand Partnership for AI-Powered Customer Service
Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is one of the best high-volume stocks to invest in. On August 12, NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) announced an expanded partnership with Salesforce to improve customer service experiences through a deeper integration of their respective platforms. The collaboration focuses on bringing NICE's AI-powered CX and intelligent orchestration capabilities together with Agentforce in Salesforce Service Cloud. The partnership builds on the companies' previous collaboration, which started in 2022 with the launch of 'Bring Your Own Telephony' with Salesforce Service Cloud Voice. The new agreement will further invest in enabling 'Bring Your Own Contact Center' and integrate NICE's Workforce Engagement Management/WEM capabilities into the Service Cloud's unified desktop. A customer service team in an office setting using the company's Customer 360 platform to communicate with customers. As part of this collaboration, NICE plans to join the Salesforce Zero Copy Partner Network. This will make it the first company in the Contact Center ecosystem to enable a bidirectional Zero Copy integration with Salesforce Data Cloud. This integration will create a shared data foundation between NICE CXone Mpower and Salesforce Data Cloud, eliminating data silos and allowing for real-time, AI-driven orchestration using complete customer journey context. Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) provides customer relationship management/CRM technology that connects companies and customers worldwide. NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) provides cloud platforms for AI-driven digital business solutions worldwide. While we acknowledge the potential of CRM as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: and . Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Salesforce Stock (NYSE:CRM) Gains Despite Price Target Cut by Stifel Analyst
Stifel analyst J. Parker Lane lowered his price target on Salesforce (CRM) stock to $325 from $375 but kept a Buy rating. His revised outlook reflects concerns over near-term performance, even though he remains optimistic about Salesforce's future in AI. CRM stock was up about 2% on Wednesday. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Key Reasons Behind Price Cut Lane spoke with several Salesforce partners after the company's fiscal Q2 (ended July 31) earnings. He found that business trends were steady to slightly better, with support from modest macro improvements and growing use of Agentforce, Salesforce's AI platform. However, he noted that the software sector is under pressure, and Salesforce needs to show stronger sequential growth and better results from its Data + AI segment (which hit $1 billion last quarter) to justify a higher valuation. Looking ahead, Lane eyes Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce's flagship conference in October, for updates on the company's AI strategy, pricing and packaging changes, and performance metrics of Agentforce after one year in market. While Lane remains confident in Salesforce's long-term growth, he trimmed his price target due to valuation pressures and the need for clearer near-term execution. Salesforce's Moves to Bolster AI Salesforce has been expanding its AI capabilities through a mix of strategic partnerships and acquisitions, aiming to make its platform more accessible. It recently deepened ties with Nice (NICE), adding the latter's AI tools to Service Cloud. This helps customer service teams use AI to automate tasks and respond faster, with full context from past customer interactions. Salesforce also teamed up with Nvidia (NVDA) to build smarter AI agents and avatars through its Agentforce platform. By combining Salesforce's CRM know-how with Nvidia's powerful computing, the two aim to deliver more predictive and personalized AI experiences across sales, service, and marketing. On the acquisition front, Salesforce has acquired which specializes in adaptive AI agents that can navigate complex digital workflows, and Waii, a natural language-to-SQL startup. Also, Salesforce is pursuing an $8 billion acquisition of Informatica (INFA), a leader in data integration and governance. These moves are likely to strengthen its AI infrastructure. Is CRM a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Turning to Wall Street, CRM stock has a Moderate Buy consensus rating based on 33 Buys, nine Holds, and two Sells assigned in the last three months. At $350.24, the average Salesforce stock price target implies a 48.46% upside potential.
Techday NZ
5 days ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
NiCE, Salesforce deepen AI partnership for unified service
NiCE has announced an expanded strategic partnership with Salesforce to integrate its AI-powered customer experience and orchestration technologies with Salesforce Service Cloud. The partnership involves a deeper integration between NiCE CXone Mpower and Salesforce Service Cloud, aimed at providing businesses with enhanced tools for customer service management and real-time orchestration across the customer journey. This builds on previous collaboration between the two companies and addresses the challenge of data silos between customer relationship management (CRM) and contact centre systems. Through this collaboration, organisations will benefit from the bidirectional Zero Copy integration with Salesforce Data Cloud, which enables the unification of contact centre interaction insights and CRM data on a shared data foundation. This integration is designed to eliminate data silos and facilitate AI-driven experiences that span both platforms, supporting real-time coordination and service delivery. NiCE will join the Salesforce Zero Copy Partner Network, marking what the company describes as the first bidirectional Zero Copy integration in the contact centre ecosystem. The companies intend for this integration to solve issues relating to fragmented customer data by enabling seamless orchestration of customer journeys involving automated agents, human agents, and supervisors, all operating within a single context. Customer journey orchestration By leveraging NiCE CXone Mpower's orchestration engine and workforce augmentation solutions within Salesforce Service Cloud's unified desktop, service representatives can access real-time customer and case data. This is expected to support AI-driven workflows and customer interactions across digital channels. A customer can now start an interaction through an autonomous agent, transition the conversation to a human service representative with full context, and bring in a supervisor for complex cases. The integration keeps conversation history and CRM records intact throughout the process, offering continuity and complete awareness of prior actions and customer intent. "This renewed partnership with Salesforce marks more than just deeper integration, it signals a vision for the future of customer service. Together, we will collaborate to help businesses move from disconnected touchpoints to intelligently orchestrated experiences that span the entire customer journey. As our partnership grows, so does our commitment to helping our mutual customers lead the way in AI-powered service," said Barry Cooper, President, CX Division, NiCE. The partnership also brings together Salesforce Service Cloud's strengths in case management, digital channel support, and agent assistive AI with NiCE's orchestration capabilities. These combined features are targeted at supporting operational efficiency in contact centres, enabling workflow automation and personalised customer service at scale. Unified service environment Kishan Chetan, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Service Cloud at Salesforce, said, "Strengthening our partnership with NiCE will help organizations further provide deeply unified customer service experiences. Together, we're helping organizations move beyond channel silos and orchestrate intelligent, outcomes-driven interactions at scale, ultimately delivering greater value to our mutual customer through continued innovation." The deepened partnership comes as both NiCE and Salesforce support a shared customer base numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The companies' shared goal is to drive improved satisfaction and outcomes for organisations looking to modernise and unify their service operations through AI and data orchestration. The expanded relationship follows earlier joint investments, such as the introduction of Bring Your Own Telephony with Salesforce Service Cloud Voice in 2022, and will now support Bring Your Own Contact Centre to further expand customer-managed channel options and workforce engagement management features. The NiCE and Salesforce expanded integration is expected to enhance the capabilities available to organisations for customer service management by providing a unified, AI-enabled environment. It will also allow AI agents to operate with contextual awareness across the full customer journey, including support, fulfilment, and case history, while enabling seamless transitions between bots, agents, and supervisors as needed.
Techday NZ
5 days ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
Granicus debuts Service Cloud to boost council digital services
Granicus has launched its Service Cloud platform in Australia and New Zealand, aiming to help local governments modernise their digital services and improve community engagement. As expectations for government services now mirror those of private sector organisations in terms of speed, convenience and personalisation, many councils are experiencing challenges caused by outdated technology, isolated systems, and limited staff resources. Francois Rizk, Director of Growth, ANZ at Granicus, said local governments are under increasing pressure to deliver the kind of frictionless, intuitive experiences that citizens now take for granted in other sectors. He noted, "In today's world, seamless digital experiences are considered table-stakes. Citizens don't compare their council's digital maturity to other councils – they compare it to Amazon or UberEats. Service Cloud helps government close the delivery gap by making services faster, smarter, and more intuitive for every resident." The new Service Cloud platform is built specifically for councils, bringing together websites, digital forms, automated workflows, and community engagement functions within a single cloud-based system. The offering is designed to address several key operational goals for local government. Functionality and outcomes Granicus emphasises that Service Cloud can help councils to deliver services more quickly by eliminating paper-based tasks and reducing process bottlenecks with digital workflows. Administrative workloads are expected to ease, allowing staff to redirect their efforts toward higher-value community outcomes. The platform supports cross-departmental coordination, providing real-time data on service trends, and helps councils leverage technical expertise and ongoing support from Granicus' Experience Services team. This approach is intended to close capability gaps and foster improvements in public sector digital delivery. Early council results Several local councils have already reported positive impacts from working with Granicus' technology. Byron Shire Council in New South Wales saw a 37% rise in organic website traffic and a 28% increase in user engagement. In South Australia, City of Tea Tree Gully Council digitised over 170 forms, which contributed to a reduction of 36,000 calls per year and saved over 60 staff hours each month. The City of Unley Council, also in South Australia, reported a customer satisfaction rate of 94% and claimed annual savings of AUD $90,000 in postage costs. The company claims that the Service Cloud offering is informed by data insights designed to give councils a detailed view of local community needs. This data-driven approach is intended to speed up digital transformation projects, reduce administrative burden, and enable government teams to focus on core service delivery. Responding to community demand Officials from Granicus say that government teams require the right resources if they are to deliver the type of digital experiences Australians and New Zealanders now expect. The launch in Australia and New Zealand comes at a time when a roundtable on economic reform is anticipated to explore solutions for capability uplift and productivity gains at the community level. Granicus believes its platform can be a tool for this process, streamlining interactions between councils and their constituents and enabling better use of municipal resources. As local authorities continue to grapple with digital transformation challenges, technology providers are offering platforms intended to simplify processes, foster better engagement, and ultimately enable local governments to function more efficiently in meeting public expectations.
Globe and Mail
6 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
NiCE Deepens Partnership with Salesforce to Accelerate End-To-End Customer Service Workflow Orchestration
NiCE (Nasdaq: NICE) today announced an expanded strategic partnership with Salesforce to deliver seamless, AI-driven customer experiences through a deeper integration between NiCE CXone Mpower and Salesforce Service Cloud. After launching Bring Your Own Telephony with Salesforce Service Cloud Voice in 2022, the companies will further invest in enabling Bring Your Own Contact Center, inclusive of customer managed channels and NiCE's leading WEM capabilities in the Service Cloud unified desktop. NiCE and Salesforce support a shared customer base of hundreds of thousands of users. This expanded partnership adds powerful new capabilities while laying the foundation for continued innovation and joint growth. NiCE further intends to join the Salesforce Zero Copy Partner Network as the first in the Contact Center ecosystem to enable the unification of contact center interaction insights with CRM data through a new bidirectional Zero Copy integration with Salesforce Data Cloud. This will provide customers with a shared data foundation between NiCE CXone Mpower and Salesforce Data Cloud that eliminates silos and unlocks data to accelerate AI-driven experiences across both platforms. Shared customers can use this integration to enable real-time AI-driven orchestration using complete experience context. AI agents can operate with a complete, stateful understanding of the entire journey across self-service, live support, and fulfillment, including awareness of past actions, intent, and outcomes. Through this collaboration, organizations can leverage CXone Mpower's real-time orchestration engine, industry-leading workforce augmentation solutions and purpose-built AI for CX seamlessly within Salesforce Service Cloud's unified desktop for Service Reps. This integration extends NiCE's industry-leading connected intelligence across Salesforce digital channels, cases, and interactions, delivering a streamlined, AI-first service experience. By uniting Service Cloud's robust CRM platform, renowned for advanced case management and extensive digital channel support, and AI assistance for service reps in the agent desktop with CXone Mpower's intelligent CX automation and orchestration capabilities, joint customers gain a unified, intelligent service environment. If a customer begins their journey with an autonomous agent, they can seamlessly transfer their conversation to a human service rep with their entire transcript and Salesforce record intact and if the issue becomes even more complex a supervisor can access the conversation for real-time coaching. This is one example of how NiCE and Salesforce are enabling seamless orchestration of complex customer journeys across every touchpoint, with real-time decisioning, workflow automation, and personalized interactions that drive customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. 'This renewed partnership with Salesforce marks more than just deeper integration, it signals a vision for the future of customer service,' said Barry Cooper, President, CX Division, NiCE. 'Together, we will collaborate to help businesses move from disconnected touchpoints to intelligently orchestrated experiences that span the entire customer journey. As our partnership grows, so does our commitment to helping our mutual customers lead the way in AI-powered service.' "Strengthening our partnership with NiCE will help organizations further provide deeply unified customer service experiences,' said Kishan Chetan, Executive VP and GM Service Cloud at Salesforce. 'Together, we're helping organizations move beyond channel silos and orchestrate intelligent, outcomes-driven interactions at scale, ultimately delivering greater value to our mutual customer through continued innovation.' About NiCE NiCE (NASDAQ: NICE) is transforming the world with AI that puts people first. Our purpose-built AI-powered platforms automate engagements into proactive, safe, intelligent actions, empowering individuals and organizations to innovate and act, from interaction to resolution. Trusted by organizations throughout 150+ countries worldwide, NiCE's platforms are widely adopted across industries connecting people, systems, and workflows to work smarter at scale, elevating performance across the organization, delivering proven measurable outcomes. Trademark Note: NiCE and the NiCE logo are trademarks of NICE Ltd. All other marks are trademarks of their respective owners. For a full list of NICE's marks, please see: Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements, including the statements by Mr. Cooper, are based on the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of the management of NICE Ltd. (the 'Company'). In some cases, such forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as 'believe,' 'expect,' 'seek,' 'may,' 'will,' 'intend,' 'should,' 'project,' 'anticipate,' 'plan,' 'estimate,' or similar words. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or performance of the Company to differ materially from those described herein, including but not limited to the impact of changes in general economic and business conditions; competition; successful execution of the Company's growth strategy; success and growth of the Company's cloud Software-as-a-Service business; rapid changes in technology and market requirements; the implementation of AI capabilities in certain products and services, decline in demand for the Company's products; inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications; difficulties in making additional acquisitions or difficulties or effectively integrating acquired operations; loss of market share; an inability to maintain certain marketing and distribution arrangements; the Company's dependency on third-party cloud computing platform providers, hosting facilities and service partners; cyber security attacks or other security incidents; privacy concerns; changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, the effects of additional tax liabilities resulting from our global operations, the effect of unexpected events or geo-political conditions, including those arising from political instability or armed conflict that may disrupt our business and the global economy; our ability to recruit and retain qualified personnel; the effect of newly enacted or modified laws, regulation or standards on the Company and our products and various other factors and uncertainties discussed in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the 'SEC'). For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company, refer to the Company's reports filed from time to time with the SEC, including the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise them, except as required by law.
