Salesforce Einstein Conversation Insights: Setup, Pricing, and What It Will Not Do

Sales reps spend 40% of their week selling. That figure comes from Salesforce's own State of Sales 2026, a survey of 4,050 sales professionals fielded in August and September 2025. Call notes, follow-ups, and CRM updates eat a large share of the other 60%.

Einstein Conversation Insights (ECI) is the Salesforce AI feature built to claw some of that time back. It takes your recorded calls, transcribes them, and turns each transcript into key insights, call summaries, and next steps on the call record inside your CRM.

This guide covers what the feature does, which editions and licenses include it, and what it costs. It walks through the Einstein Conversation Insights setup steps in order, then the limits we've seen. We re-checked every figure against Salesforce's documentation, because much of it changed this year.

What Einstein Conversation Insights Does Inside Salesforce

ECI does not record anything. Salesforce states this plainly on its considerations page. You connect a recording provider; the feature pulls the recording and transcript, processes it, and writes the result to a Voice Call or Video Call record. That one distinction shapes consent, storage, and which tools you need alongside it.

Once a call is processed, the record shows an interactive player, a clickable transcript, participants, and the talk-to-listen ratio. Insight chips highlight key moments and jump the player to the exact second a pricing question or competitor mention happened. Reps get an Action Items tab with next steps. Managers can comment on the timeline, tag teammates, and copy a link to a specific moment.

Strip the marketing language from "the ability to see insights and trends from customer conversations," and this is what remains. You get a searchable call record with the moments that matter marked, so managers coach from call data instead of memory.

Automatic Insights ECI Finds Without Any Setup

Salesforce ships 11 automatic insights for sales calls, and the help overview lists them: Next Steps, Pricing Mentioned, Challenges, Trending, Longest Monologue, Longest Customer Story, Question, and four objection types (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing). Machine learning finds these; you can't configure them.

Automatic insights vary widely by language, so check the Automatic tab under Call Insights in Setup for your locale. Orgs on Vendor Transcript Processing lose four of them: Trending, Longest Monologue, Longest Customer Story, and Question. That setting is on by default for anyone enabling the feature now, and it can't be turned off.

Custom insights are where your own keyword list goes: products, competitors, integration names, whatever your reps need surfaced. An org can hold 100 custom insights with 25 keywords each, at 255 characters per keyword. Matching is exact, so "demo" and "demos" are two entries. A custom insight can be deactivated but never deleted, so name them carefully.

Generative AI Features That Sit Behind a Higher License

The Einstein Conversation Insights features people picture when they hear "AI call analysis" are the generative ones, powered by Einstein generative AI. Salesforce documents these on the same help page, and Starter and Pro Suite orgs don't get them:

• Call Summaries: an automatic call summary on the Summary tab with next steps and customer feedback, including customer sentiment. Reps can edit and share it.
• Generative Conversation Insights: you write the prompt ("Which integrations did the buyer ask about?") and the answer appears on every processed call.
• Call Explorer: ask a call record questions in plain language, such as which products came up or what the buyer still needs answered.
• Sales Signals: groups product and competitor mentions from transcripts into themes. It needs Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) and can't be tested in a sandbox.
• Deal Recap: summarizes the history of a closed opportunity so the team can see why it was won or lost.
• Call Coaching: define competencies, then score video calls manually or with an AI agent.
• In-Person Meeting Transcription: capture a face-to-face meeting from the Salesforce mobile app and get the same insights.

One more thing changed in 2026. Salesforce completed its acquisition of Momentum on March 2, 2026. The public Conversation Intelligence page now describes the product as "powered by Momentum," with Momentum bundled into Agentforce for Sales alongside autonomous AI agents. The Help documentation and the Setup menu still call the feature Einstein Conversation Insights. Expect the marketing name and the admin name to drift apart for a while.

Which Salesforce Editions Include Einstein Conversation Insights and How Many Hours You Get

This is the part the earlier version of this article got wrong, and the part most competing guides skip. The considerations page, checked in September 2026, gives these allowances:

Usage pools at the org level. Ten Enterprise Standard licenses give the whole sales organization 600 hours, regardless of who talks the most.

Run the math before you assume "included" means "enough." A 20-rep team on Enterprise Edition gets 1,200 pooled hours from its Standard licenses. If each rep records five hours of calls a week, the team burns 100 hours a week and exhausts the allowance in about 12 weeks. At that point, you buy more hours or move to paid 675-hour licenses, which would give the same 20 reps 13,500 hours.

A note for long-time Unlimited or Performance customers. If users accessed the feature through an add-on license before Summer '22, Salesforce recommends moving them to the Sales Cloud Included or Einstein Conversation Insights Included permission sets. Add the new permissions before removing the old ones, or users lose access mid-migration.

Einstein Conversation Insights Pricing in 2026 (Confirm Before You Budget)

The Conversation Insights pricing page, as published in September 2026, lists four ways to buy. All are per user per month, billed annually:

Salesforce marks every pricing page "subject to change," and the same page says there are no trial licenses for Conversation Intelligence and that contracts are annual. Get the figures in writing from your account executive.

If you're already on Salesforce Sales Cloud Enterprise or above, baseline Conversation Insights is included. The $50 SKU then mainly matters for extra processed hours or for editions that would otherwise lack it. And the generative features most sales teams actually want (summaries, Call Explorer, Sales Signals) sit in Agentforce 1 Sales Edition or the Agentforce for Sales add-on, not the $50 SKU.

Einstein Conversation Insights Setup: The Eight Steps in Order

Initial setup is a guided page in Salesforce, and the sequence below follows it. Salesforce publishes an implementation guide (PDF) and a Trailhead module if you want the click-by-click version. The admin doing this needs Customize Application, Modify All Data, Assign Permission Sets, and Manage Users. A certified Salesforce partner can run it for you, but none of the steps require code.

1. Check the Prerequisites Before You Flip the Switch

Confirm you're on a supported edition and that Change Data Capture is available. Build at least two levels of role hierarchy, because the Conversation Insights dashboards won't generate without them. Decide which recording provider you'll connect first. If you're testing in a sandbox, know that the feature has to be re-enabled there and that recordings and transcripts never copy over from production.

2. Turn On Conversation Insights in Setup

From Setup, type "Einstein Conversation Insights" in Quick Find, open General Settings, and switch Conversation Insights on. A readiness indicator appears once the related dashboards are available. Salesforce warns this can take some time, so don't schedule your rep training for the same afternoon.

3. Connect a Video Recording Provider

Microsoft Teams or Zoom Meetings or Google Meet connect from the same Setup page, and each user then links their own account. Three requirements catch teams out. Video call processing needs user-level download access to MP4 call recordings and call transcripts. Zoom needs cloud recording and transcripts enabled in advance. A Google Meet account has to sit on a paid Workspace plan that supports recording, because free accounts can't record at all.

Teams support is limited to orgs under 30,000 users. And email addresses with a plus sign (sales+demo@company.com) aren't supported for video call processing, which shows up later as participant matching errors.

4. Connect a Voice Recording Provider

Sales Dialer works out of the box, though it's an extra-cost add-on. Dialpad, RingCentral, Aircall, and Amazon Connect connect through the Voice Connector app, which you install, configure, and run under an integration user. Zoom Phone is not available out of the box. Salesforce Voice with partner telephony only works when the partner hosts audio files on AWS, so ask your telephony vendor before you promise call insights on phone calls.

5. Assign Permission Sets

On the General Settings page, click Add Assignment and choose the permission sets that match your license: Conversation Insights for Sales, Sales Cloud Bundle Included, or Einstein Conversation Insights Included. Service users need Conversation Insights for Service. If a license is removed from a user during a call, that call is not processed, so don't reshuffle seats mid-day.

6. Define Call Insights

Open Call Insights Setup and add your products, your competitors, and any custom insights. Predefine these before calls start landing, because insights only apply to calls processed after they exist, and new custom insights take time to propagate. Enter singular and plural forms as separate keywords.

7. Turn On the Extras That Make ECI Useful

Four settings we'd switch on immediately. Related Record Matching, so calls attach to the right opportunity or account (Salesforce recommends Einstein Activity Capture alongside it for better participant matching). Optimal Speaker Separation, which Salesforce recommends for transcript quality. Call Summaries and Generative Insights, if your license includes them. Conversation Search, which lets reps search across transcripts for phrases you never defined as insights.

8. Test a Call, Then Watch Status and Usage

Record a test call longer than the processing minimums: over 10 seconds for a voice call and over one minute for a video call. Voice processing can take up to eight hours, and the dashboards refresh roughly every eight hours by default. Once the Voice Call or Video Call record appears with a transcript and insights, open the Status and Usage panel in Setup to track license counts and connection health. Calls are not processed in trial or demo orgs, so this go-live test has to happen in production or a sandbox.

Where Conversation Insights Show Up in a Rep's Day

ECI records are separate from standard Salesforce activities, but they appear in the same places, in the flow of work. The Activity Timeline on an Account or Opportunity shows the call, its insights, and the transcript context. The Pipeline Inspection side panel shows the same, so a sales manager can skim ten deals without opening ten records.

The Conversation Hub tab is the newer home base for conversation data. It shows opportunities related to your conversations, your team's opportunities, your accounts, calls with no related record, and top signals if Sales Signals is on. The Conversations tab filters by owner, type, date, or related record.

Three smaller features earn their keep. Call Collections groups calls into a searchable playlist for onboarding, capped at 100 calls and 100 members each. The Call Highlights email goes out daily when at least three calls were processed the previous day, and admins can throttle it to weekly or monthly. And Flow Builder gets three invocable actions (Explore Conversation, Get Conversation Transcript, Get Conversation Intelligence) that let you create tasks or draft follow-up emails from transcript text.

One deadline to plan around: Salesforce scheduled the Analytics for Conversation Insights dashboards for retirement in Summer '26. Standard Salesforce reports and custom report types on the Voice Call and Video Call objects are the replacement, so build your reporting there rather than on the legacy dashboards.

What Trips Up Einstein Conversation Insights Rollouts (Including What We Got Wrong)

The earlier version of this article told you ECI was "included in Performance and Unlimited Editions" and that "Enterprise Edition users can add it for an additional fee," with 10 licenses by default. That was accurate when written and is wrong now. Enterprise orgs get up to 2,000 Standard licenses at no extra cost. We also listed sentiment analysis as a standalone feature. Salesforce documents customer feedback inside generative call summaries, not a separate sentiment score on every call. Both are corrected above.

Beyond our own errors, these are the documented limits that cause the most support tickets:

• Service voice calls aren't analyzed. Voice calls with a SourceType of Service are not transcribed or analyzed. Salesforce does ship service automatic insights (Escalation, Attrition Risk, Payments), so check which call types your support team would actually send through it before you plan a rollout.
• Big or long video calls fail. Calls with more than 40 participants aren't processed, and calls over three hours may not process properly.
• One recording per call. If a rep stops and restarts recording, only the longer recording attaches. If multiple transcript files exist for one call, none are processed.
• Upload limits. Users can upload three MP4 recordings a day, each under 2 GB. Audio sent through the upload API is capped at 64 MB.
• Mono audio breaks speaker separation. Zoom transcripts can't reliably split speakers on mono recordings, so talk ratios become meaningless.
• Data location and access. Some data is stored with a public cloud provider in the United States. European orgs' data is stored in Europe but processed in the US. Salesforce employees can review recordings to improve the product. Shield Platform Encryption isn't supported.
• Consent is on you. Salesforce puts responsibility for recording consent and local privacy law on the customer, and voicemail recordings from Salesforce Voice are never processed.
• Browser and scheduler gaps. Videos won't play in Safari, and third-party scheduling tools aren't supported for creating call records.

Einstein Conversation Insights vs.Cirrus Insight Conversation Intelligence

Suppose you're on Enterprise or above, you use one of the supported voice and video recording providers, and your call volume fits the hour allowance. Then ECI is the obvious starting point. It's already inside Salesforce, the setup is guided, and the base features cost nothing extra. Pipeline Inspection and the Conversation Hub are native views a partner app can't fully replicate.

Cirrus Insight Conversation Intelligence, part of the AI-powered Revenue Workspace we built for Salesforce, takes a different route. A Cirrus bot joins the meeting as an attendee, captures the video and a word-for-word transcript, and transcribes in real time. During the call it nudges the rep with live coaching and answers questions on the fly. Afterward, it drafts follow-up emails, action items, and CRM data updates. Meeting AI adds a daily briefing on attendees and companies before each meeting, which covers the stretch of the sales cycle ECI doesn't touch.

Cirrus is another vendor and another bot in the meeting, and attendees can see it. You're adding a subscription on top of Salesforce products you already pay for. And if your team lives in Pipeline Inspection, ECI's native placement there is hard to beat.

Where we see Cirrus fit best: Professional Edition orgs, where ECI isn't supported at all, and teams that blow through the included hours. Also teams that want prep and live coaching, not only post-call analysis. And teams that need email and calendar sync into Salesforce too, which we compare on our Cirrus Insight vs. Einstein Activity Capture page. If you're weighing a standalone platform instead, our Gong vs. Salesforce comparison and the sales call recording software roundup cover the wider market.

FAQ About Einstein Conversation Insights

Is Einstein Conversation Insights free with Salesforce?

Partly. Sales Enterprise Edition includes up to 2,000 Standard ECI licenses at 60 processed hours each per year, and Unlimited and Performance include 120 hours per license. The generative features (Call Summaries, Call Explorer, Sales Signals) require Agentforce 1 Sales Edition or the Agentforce for Sales add-on, listed at $125 per user per month. Confirm current terms with Salesforce.

Does Einstein Conversation Insights record calls?

No. It processes recordings from a connected provider such as Zoom Meetings, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Sales Dialer. Consent and local recording law remain the customer's responsibility.

Which recording providers does Conversation Insights integrate with?

Sales Dialer, Zoom Meetings, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams work out of the box. Dialpad, RingCentral, Aircall, and Amazon Connect connect through the Voice Connector app. Zoom Phone isn't supported out of the box, and other providers need API integration work on your side.

How many languages does Einstein Conversation Insights transcribe?

Salesforce lists 37 languages, with regional variants for English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese. Automatic insights such as Next Steps and objections vary by language, and orgs on Vendor Transcript Processing are limited to the languages each vendor supports.

What is the difference between Einstein Conversation Insights and Salesforce Conversation Intelligence?

They are the same product family under two names. Setup and Help still say Einstein Conversation Insights; the salesforce.com product page says Conversation Intelligence, "powered by Momentum" since Salesforce completed the Momentum acquisition on March 2, 2026. ECI is the specific feature you enable; Conversation Intelligence is the broader marketing label.

Can Einstein Conversation Insights help a service team?

It can be added to Service Cloud licenses, but it is optimized for sales. Voice calls with a Service source type are not transcribed or analyzed, so support teams get far less from it than sales teams do.

How long does ECI take to process a call?

Processing starts when the recording is uploaded. Voice call processing can take up to eight hours, and the Conversation Insights dashboards refresh roughly every eight hours by default. Voice calls under 10 seconds and video calls under one minute are not processed.

Next Step: See Conversation Intelligence Before and During the Call

ECI gives you the post-call record and an AI-generated call summary inside Salesforce. If you also want the briefing before the meeting and coaching during it, we can show you both. Reps and managers close more deals with less admin: start a free trial of Cirrus Insight or book a 30-minute demo with an advisor.