SaaS provider Salesforce introduces Agentforce, a suite of autonomous AI agents designed to support employees in customer service, sales, marketing and commerce, helping to increase efficiency and customer satisfaction.
With Agentforce, Salesforce says, companies can extend their own workload when needed with just a few clicks. The AI agents analyze data, make decisions, and take on tasks such as answering customer service inquiries, qualifying sales contacts, and optimizing marketing campaigns. In addition, Agentforce makes it easy for every company to create, customize, and implement their own agents for every use case and industry.
“Agentforce represents the third generation of AI: It goes beyond the concept of co-pilots and ushers in a new era in which highly precise and low-hallucination intelligent agents actively contribute to customer success,” says Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce. “While other AI solutions require a lot of in-house development work, Agentforce is a ready-to-use platform that offers companies immediate benefits and high flexibility. We want to activate one billion agents with Agentforce by the end of 2025.”
Unlike previous copilots and chatbots, which rely on human guidance and have difficulty with complex or multi-step tasks, Agentforce is designed to work autonomously: According to the provider, it retrieves the right data when needed, creates workflows for each task and carries them out without human intervention. Like a self-driving car, Agentforce uses real-time data to adapt to changing conditions and works independently within the company’s user-defined guidelines. When necessary, Agentforce seamlessly hands over tasks to the responsible employees, including a summary of the interaction so far, a compact overview of the customer data and recommendations for further action.
First pilot customers with clear results
Industry leaders such as OpenTable, Saks and Wiley are already using the platform. The publishing house Wiley, for example, offers its customers dynamic, conversational self-service. Agentforce answers customer questions using Wiley’s knowledge base, which is already integrated into Salesforce, can resolve problems with login details, registrations or payments and provide customers with the right information. By handling routine queries in this new way, Agentforce is said to have increased Wiley’s case resolution rate by over 40%, outperforming the old chatbot and giving employees more time to deal with complex cases.
Structure and functions
Agentforce consists of innovative technologies from the Salesforce Platform, ready-to-use autonomous agents, low-code tools for creating your own agents, and the Agentforce Partner Network with a range of special agents and actions.
This includes
- Data: The Data Cloud is at the heart of the action, unifying and harmonizing all customer and metadata from different sources in real time. It provides context and precision for the tasks performed by Agentforce across all applications and touchpoints involved (chat, email, etc.).
- AI: The new Atlas Reasoning Engine is the “brain” of Agentforce and simulates human thinking and actions. From task entry to task execution, it checks every step for correctness and relevance, always based on trustworthy data. In this way, Agentforce can make precise and objective decisions and complete tasks independently.
- Automation: Companies can integrate existing workflows and processes directly with Agentforce through applications such as MuleSoft or interfaces and optimize them, for example by automating business processes that span multiple departments.
Ready-to-use agents, including those from third parties
Agentforce agents can be set up quickly, with just a few clicks, without programming, and are ready for use immediately. Agents are available for applications in customer service, sales, e-commerce, B2B trade and marketing. The former Einstein Copilot is being incorporated into Agentforce – due to its higher level of independent data research, intelligence and task execution, it is significantly more powerful.
With various builders, companies can quickly and easily adapt agents to their needs or create and test their own. The Prompt Builder also makes it possible to optimize ready-made templates with your own CRM or Data Cloud data.
According to Salesforce, leading technology companies such as Amazon Web Services, Box, Certinia, Copado, Coupa, Google, Honeywell, IBM and Workday will also initially provide over 20 agents and actions for Agentforce via the AppExchange.
Prices and availability
Agentforce for Customer Service and Sales will be generally available on October 25, 2024, with some components of the Atlas Reasoning Engine (such as Query Refinement and Output Evaluation) generally available in February 2025. Pricing for Agentforce starts at $2 per conversation, with volume discounts also available.
Source: www.com-magazin.de
