Salesforce Agentforce: A Quick Overview

Nikita M.

Media-savvy content creator, with a curiosity for all Salesforce experiences.

Updated: Oct 18th, 2024

It did not take long for Agentforce to become the hottest topic of 2024. This innovative platform, powered by Einstein AI, was praised by Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO and founder, as the most exciting tech that will forever change how companies and software work. 

We have already seen Salesforce go through its first and second waves of AI strategy, bringing predictive and generative capabilities to the community. So where are we at now? As we speak, we have entered Salesforce’s third wave, which promises autonomous tools and the emergence of AI agents in the workforce!

Of course, it’s a mega-exciting subject for Titan. If you love tech advancements that make systems easier to manage as much as we do and want to know more about Salesforce Agentforce, join us in the article below. We explore how Salesforce can support teams with autonomous agents that can perform a variety of organizational tasks.

Let’s get started!

What is Salesforce Agentforce? 

If you can believe all the hype after Dreamforce 2024, the Salesforce Agentforce platform sounds like the next big thing in technology and business. It promises to help companies take on more jobs with fewer resources. It does this by empowering teams to build AI Agents that work alongside human professionals to meet business goals. These standard AI Agents are templates designed to fit perfectly into existing workflows so that teams can continue to optimize their Customer 360 applications and processes.  Teams that need unique solutions can also build custom AI Agents to extend Salesforce solutions and innovations. 

On the surface, these advancements sound like a game-changer for companies hoping to scale in the near future. However, there are still many questions that Salesforce has not addressed. Andreessen Horowitz and Yahoo believe that Salesforce is struggling to lead the way for AI greatness in business. It makes us wonder, could Agentforce be Salesforce’s answer to critics who don’t think they are doing enough for AI innovation?

Let’s take a look at some of the main concerns tech professionals have about the emergence of Agentforce:

• The community does not understand how to build AI agents for custom business solutions. Usually a custom setup requires low to heavy coding with constant maintenance. These additional requirements would be a new expense to add to monthly budgets.
• The intent of Agentforce is to have a collaboration between human professionals and AI agents to complete business goals, but at the end of the day, will we really need humans to perform the tasks that their AI agents can skillfully accomplish alone?
• If AI agents can perform entry-level tasks, businesses do not need to hire graduates or junior professionals, which would create a gap in employment and shift the economy in ways we cannot imagine.

Do you agree? Let’s get the conversation rolling. Let us know your thoughts on Salesforce’s AI plans and if you are excited about the future of tech. But, back to our exploration of Agentforce. Allow us to tackle the next question:

What is an Agentforce Agent? 

It’s an intelligent application that never sleeps! It supports colleagues and customers with specialized help whenever they need it. Admins can configure an Agentforce Agent to learn custom business domain knowledge so that it can run tasks for the roles it was built to deliver.

Salesforce Agentforce: AI Technology

Now that we know what Salesforce Agentforce is, we are sure you want to know what it’s built on. Agentforce is fueled by Einstein AI and Salesforce Data Cloud to give teams the ability to create Agents with leading AI software and technology. 

Thanks to Einstein AI, Agentforce can:

Automate Repetitive Tasks

Give Teams Intelligent Insights

Predict Customer Behaviors

Access Natural Language Processing (NLP) Tools for Chatbot Functionality

Create Personalized Interactions for Customers

Support Sentiment Analysis

But what about your Data Cloud? Your Salesforce platform is integral when it comes to working with Agentfoce’s AI features. For one, Salesforce Data Cloud combines customer data from all sources so that Agentforce can use it to make accurate predictions and recommendations. 

Data Cloud ensures that real-time customer data is collected and stored in a single location. Then, Agentforce leverages this data to boost customer success and speed up business decision-making. Please read our Data Cloud Pricing article for more information about the best option for your business size. 

Pre-Built Agentforce Agents

Whether your business wants pre-built or custom-made Agents, Agentforce can get the job done. Agentforce records the natural language descriptions teams need for their specific role and then uses that information to find semantically similar details in Customer 360’s metadata. By learning what a team needs, Agentforce can autosuggest answers, provide actions and knowledge, and give AI Agents across an organization guardrails to work accurately and professionally to complete work tasks.

Let’s look at some AI Agents that can be added to your system to perform the jobs you need.

Service Agent

With Salesforce Agentforce, a Service Agent can be built to resolve customer queries 24/7. These smart Agents interact with customers across various communication channels without the need of human help. For example, businesses can use a Service Agent to quickly respond to customer queries and resolve issues. 

Businesses trust that a Service Agent can handle a job since it pulls answers from accurate data in Salesforce. When it comes to configuring a Service Agent in a system, Salesforce offers quick pre-built templates to get up and running immediately or custom development with low code options. Whichever route you choose, ensure to give Service Agent clear guardrails and direction of when to bump up cases to human professionals. 

Sales Development Representative (SDR) Agent

Next up are SDR Agents, designed to support human sales representatives and can easily perform the following tasks on its own:

Answer Questions About Products and Services

Manage Salesforce Objects

Schedule Appointments 

Since Agentforce integrates with Salesforce data, the SDR Agent responds to customers accurately 24/7. When working with a SDR Agent, sales teams can configure how often they want to contact a customer and which channels to reach them on. Sales teams can also set up when the SDR Agent will interact with a customer and to provide a detailed brief before directing a customer to a human sales representative. 

SDR Agents are not only used to engage customers. They also interact with leads in their language and channel of choice, such as via text in WhatsApp.  

Sales Coach

Agentforce is dedicated to helping sales teams by providing them with a Sales Coach. This AI Agent is essential for practicing sales skills that are vital to closing deals. Human sales representatives can hone their skills through personalized role-play sessions with the Sales Coach to strengthen pitches, negotiation tactics, and how to manage customer objections. After these sessions, the Sales Coach can give professionals feedback on their strengths and weaknesses along with tips to improve skills needed to finalize those deals. 

It’s good to know that whether sales teams choose coaching or not, they can still assess their ROI by analyzing deal data, which includes win and loss rates. 

Personal Shopper Agent

Next up, businesses can make use of the Personal Shopper Agent to interact with online customers directly from a commerce site. This Agent makes finding products and services easier on a shopping site so that customers can make purchases faster. For example, a Personal Shopper Agent can help customers with search queries or provide them with recommendations on specific products. This Agent also works in messaging apps like WhatsApp. 

Campaign Agent

This AI Agent is for the marketing teams! With a Campaign Agent, marketers can build better campaigns faster. It works by generating campaign briefs, segmenting target audiences, creating content, and even building an entire customer journey in Salesforce Flow. And that’s not all. The Campaign Agent will examine marketing campaigns against business KPIs so that it can provide recommendations on how to improve strategies. 

Who Should Use the Salesforce Agentforce Platform? 

Anyone who needs that extra support to drive customer success. In this global environment, sales never sleeps. Deals are finalized at every hour of the day or night. This is why we need extra help from AI Agents. Here are a few people and organizations that could genuinely benefit from configuring Agentforce and Salesforce:

• Growing Companies can reap even more rewards since Agentforce supports any use case. As the business grows in products, services, and people, there will be a variety of new situations that will need customer and employee support. 
• Downscaling Companies are those cutting back on resources and finances to survive in competitive markets. With Agentforce, they can scale operations and do more with less while creating strategies for growth and expansion. 
• Support Teams could make the most of Agentforce by creating an AI Agent to analyze customer surveys and reviews to provide valuable information on areas of improvement. The AI Agent can also recommend ideas to support agents who can make customer retention plans better.  

Salesforce Agentforce Pricing 

Agentforce sounds like it can support human teams in new ways that have never happened before. So, how much will it cost a business? To answer your question, Agentforce will be available for Service and Sales Clouds as of 25 October 2024, and the fees start at $2 per conversation.

However, there will be discounts, so check out the official Salesforce website for more information. 

See you soon.

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Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you found a mistake, please contact us.