Agentforce by Salesforce: the AI agent that is revolutionizing customer and employee experiences

Presented by Salesforce as a fusion of AI, humans and data, these new autonomous agents will be assisting users and customers in several Salesforce clouds, including Sales, Service and Marketing.
Let us explore six Agentforce features that will revolutionize customer and employee experiences.

Several features have evolved while others have been newly introduced. Fed by the Salesforce AI and its Atlas Reasoning Engine, these new capacities enable the AI agents to analyse data and initiate actions in a fully autonomous way.

This new solution makes it possible for any company to create, personalize and deploy its own AI agents with ease, using low-code or no-code tools. You no longer need to spend hour after hour configuring language recognition for your chatbots, with all the variants of sentences and words needed for the bot to understand. The Salesforce AI engine will do it for you. 

“Agentforce embodies the third wave of artificial intelligence, going beyond the abilities of simple assistants to usher in a new age of intelligent agents with remarkable precision and unprecedented reliability, acting as catalysts for customer success. Unlike other platforms, Agentforce stands out as a revolutionary and trustworthy solution, which transparently integrates AI in each workflow, going deep into the core of the customer journey. This approach makes it possible to anticipate needs, strengthen relationships, stimulate growth and be proactive throughout the customer journey. ” stated Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce.

While many AI tools are currently available on Salesforce, let us take a look at the main new features that come with Agentforce. 

Service Agent

Service Agent is an AI-enhanced agent that can respond to customer requests through several communication channels, such as a chatbot or instant messaging (WhatsApp, for example).
 

This virtual agent will be able to understand customer questions and put forward solutions within the defined scope. If the request is not understood or goes beyond the scope, the agent will pass it on to a human agent.

Each agent’s scope of action can be personalized, as can its authorizations and access to data used to formulate responses. All of these features can be configured in Salesforce. 
This agent is ideally suited to handling frequent customer requests that do not require human intervention, making it possible to provide 24/7 assistance.

The primary advantage of this new agent over a traditional chatbot is the significant reduction in configuration time. Unlike Salesforce’s current chatbots, which require training to be able to recognize customer requests, through keywords or sentence variations, Service Agent does not need to go through the setup and adaptation stages. This makes it more flexible in case of process changes or the introduction of new services. 

What’s more, Service Agent can be fed with internal documents (such as Base Knowledge in Salesforce, FAQs, user guides, etc.) so as to provide more precise and contextualized answers to various customer questions.
 

On the customer side, long waiting times on the phone or by email for a simple question will be a thing of the past. The agent can respond in a matter of seconds, thereby considerably improving customer satisfaction.

Sales Development Representative (SDR) Agent

SDR Agent is nothing short of a revolution for Salesforce. Capable of autonomous operation, this agent will answer questions about the company’s products, extract data on Salesforce and schedule appointments for you! 

By using data contained in Salesforce and in specific commercial documents (such as price lists and discount rules), the agent will be able to answer customer questions about products or special offers by email, and, if needed, to offer appointment slots and directly schedule them so as to lighten sales team workloads. 

SDR Agent even goes a step further, using the prices and discount rules you have provided to generate a personalized sales offer!

It can also create opportunities and send reminders to your sales representatives to help them focus on the most promising leads.
You will be able to configure the agent’s interaction channels – email, SMS, WhatsApp – and the situations in which it can perform actions. It is also possible to define the language, the tone used and even its avatar.

The main advantage offered by this agent is significant time savings for sales teams, relieving them of administrative tasks so they can devote more attention to their customers. On the customer side, the experience becomes smoother and more responsive.

Sales Coach

Another major innovation: Sales Coach, a powerful virtual assistant for sales teams. This agent can be used by teams to prepare for proposal presentations, simulate negotiations or manage objections, without the need for a human interlocutor. It uses the data present in Salesforce related to an opportunity, in combination with customer information and its own knowledge, to play the role of the customer in a meeting simulation.

At the end of the exercise, it provides a detailed report, highlighting strengths, areas for improvement and actions to take in order to move negotiations forward. You can think of it as a Jedi Master for sales!

Thanks to performance analyses, it becomes possible to measure how this AI coach impacts sales staff efficiency. 

But that’s not all: it is also capable of providing real-time input during meetings. With Salesforce integrated in your videoconferencing tool (say Zoom), the agent can discreetly provide suggestions as the meeting unfolds, by detecting mentions of prices, competitors or objections and offering suitable responses.

Sales Coach can be a significant asset for small sales teams that do not always have the human or financial resources needed to organize training sessions. Could we envisage AI one day replacing a person in a business negotiation? We’ll have to wait and see, and above all test it out !

Personal Shopper Agent

No, Salesforce hasn’t yet invented a robot that will do your shopping for you, but we’re getting closer! This new AI agent can be deployed on e-commerce websites or via messaging platforms like WhatsApp to assist visitors and facilitate their interactions.
 

It is an intelligent agent that can provide product information and recommend similar articles according to customer preferences, trends or current special offers, all using Salesforce data. Not only will it suggest products, it can also answer practical questions, like how to track a delivery.

What advantages does Personal Shopper Agent offer?
In an environment where upselling has become essential, being able to suggest the right product to the right person at the right time is a strategic asset. Automating this process offers the potential to reduce costs while increasing efficiency. What’s more, for ever more demanding and time-pressed customers, this agent helps to improve satisfaction by facilitating and speeding up the buying journey.

Campaign Agent

Campaign Agent is proving its credentials as a marketing team assistant. Its main purpose is to save time for marketing teams by automating key tasks. Based on a detailed prompt given by the user, Campaign Agent can generate a campaign brief, identify the ideal audience and select appropriate content. It can even develop an initial version of the customer journey in Salesforce’s Flows by automatically designing process steps from creation to decision-making.

These tasks, which previously required human intervention, can now be automated using Campaign Agent and well-formulated instructions. Another asset: this agent operates continuously. This means that it can constantly analyse campaign performance in relation to KPIs and suggest optimizations in real time.

In short, Campaign Agent offers considerable time savings for users, both in terms of campaign design and performance tracking, with AI-suggested improvements to optimize results.

Agentforce (formerly Einstein Copilot)

Agentforce (previously known as Einstein Copilot) has evolved into an intelligent agent that is able to retrieve data, think, formulate plans and act autonomously. Now acting as a personalized assistant, it supports employees by performing specific tasks in a fully integrated manner, searching for and analysing data, creating action plans and implementing them to improve workplace productivity.

Agentforce also makes it possible to create bespoke agents, with scopes of action and tasks defined according to your needs. This feature opens the way for innovative usages.

Ritu Jyoti, General Manager and Group VP for AI and Data Market Research and Advisory at IDC, laid out her perspective: 

“As AI continues to evolve, I’m seeing a fundamental shift in how work is done, with the emergence of agents playing a central role in driving efficiency and scale. Salesforce’s new Agentforce stands out as a promising suite of tools, offering businesses a comprehensive platform of intelligent agents designed to automate and streamline tasks across a wide range of industries. It is crucial for companies, at any point on their AI implementation journeys, to comprehend the advanced abilities of these modern agents, which can perform a wide range of tasks beyond those of standard chatbots or even copilots. The latest agents integrated into Salesforce’s Agentforce suite are capable of not just conversing but also taking action. Implementing these solutions can boost efficiency and ensure the longevity of organizations in a competitive environment. ” 

Einstein Trust Layer, management of AI-related risks by Salesforce 

While Agentforce offers clear advantages to Salesforce users and their customers, concerns surrounding AI persist, particularly in the area of data security, loss of control and dehumanization. And what about Salesforce’s AI?

Salesforce has introduced several safeguards to ensure control, ethics and security in relation to its AI agents.
Agents are contained within strict boundaries: they can only access the information they need to perform their role. Mechanisms are in place to mask sensitive data, particularly personal information, in order to protect privacy and limit non-essential access.

Prompt Defense is another key measure that secures prompts used by generative AI. This feature blocks attempts to generate content that is inappropriate, dangerous or contains sensitive data, thereby protecting the system against malicious attacks aimed at deceiving the model.

Furthermore, Salesforce’s AI does not store any data on third-party servers, even when using external AI providers. Data is instantly deleted once it has been processed.

Finally, humans remain central to the process. Without their intervention to redirect prompts and configure agents, the AI cannot function. Humans also step in as a final source of assistance in cases where the AI agent fails or is unable to adequately respond.

Einstein Trust Layer guarantees secure and controlled use of Salesforce’s AI features. It gives your teams peace of mind and your customers an enhanced experience.

The AI agents ‘Agentforce for Service’ and ‘Agentforce for Sales’ will be accessible as of 25 October 2024, while some components of Atlas Reasoning Engine will be released in February 2025. These dates mark the opening of a new chapter for Salesforce’s AI, with the arrival of advanced capabilities that will transform both customer service and sales.