As all major software providers are vying for a slice of the AI pie, Salesforce is turning the dial on the arms race with their latest acquisition, Tenyx.
Tenyx is the creator of an AI-powered voice agent, “that customers actually want”. This acquisition fits perfectly into Salesforce’s new agent strategy, which they recently teased ahead this year’s Dreamforce. As confirmed on Salesforce’s website, they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire the startup which is due to close this quarter.
Why Have Salesforce Acquired Tenyx?
Tenyx, founded in 2022 is a small startup of 26 employees according to LinkedIn, and focuses on building innovative voice AI solutions, specifically focused on service use cases.
Service use cases seem to be a huge focus for Salesforce, who also acquired Airkit.ai back in September of last year. Airkit, another “Agent” focused product company, promises to resolve 90% of customer questions instantly with their chatbot. Salesforce’s new Agentforce platform, which will be released at Dreamforce, seems to be Airkit.ai repackaged.
Tenyx is an interesting acquisition for Salesforce, who are seeking to disrupt the current issues with IVRs (Interactive Voice Response systems), whom I’m sure we can all relate to after spending ages speaking to a robot on the phone.
As we have all seen from ChatGPT and other AI systems in recent times, we can converse with these systems as if they were a human, so it’s only logical that this kind of technology can be implemented into customer service processes (See a quick demo of Tenyx here).
Summary
With the acquisitions of Tenyx and Airkit.ai, it seems as though Salesforce is favoring the service processes to disrupt as a priority.
However, in their latest tease of the new Agentforce platform, Salesforce has shown both Sales and Service use cases. In my opinion, if Salesforce can nail down customer support AI, it could truly disrupt the industry.