Agentforce by Salesforce: Transforming Business Automation with AI Agents

Agentforce is Salesforce's latest innovation that lets businesses create AI-powered agents capable of working on their own to tackle various tasks. These agents are designed to connect with your business data and take actions across sales, customer service, marketing, and commerce. Think of them as smart assistants that don't just wait for instructions — they act independently to get work done.

For example, imagine a retail business receiving thousands of customer inquiries about shipping delays. Instead of overwhelming a human support team, Agentforce can respond instantly, resolve issues, and even process refunds, all on its own. Meanwhile, your team can focus on solving more complex challenges or building stronger customer relationships.

What makes Agentforce stand out is its flexibility. Built on the trusted Salesforce platform, it's easy to customize these AI agents for your business using tools you're already familiar with, like workflows or APIs. With Agentforce, businesses can scale their operations like never before, creating a seamless partnership between humans and AI to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalized results. Agentforce represents the third wave of AI, after predictive AI and copilots.

An Agentforce Agent is an intelligent system capable of acting autonomously to handle tasks and solve problems, often by interacting directly with customers or employees. Think of it as a smart digital assistant that doesn't just answer questions but takes meaningful actions based on context, data, and defined rules — all without human help.

Here's how an Agent typically works in Salesforce Agentforce:

• Understand the Query — When a customer asks a question or submits a request, the Agentforce Agent identifies the intent behind it. For example, a customer might ask, “Why hasn't my package arrived?” The Agent recognizes this as a shipping inquiry.

• Break it down — The Agent then translates the query into smaller, actionable steps — called Agent Actions. This might include checking shipment status, pulling order details, and reviewing delivery records.

• Retrieve Data — The Agent uses tools like Data Cloud, which provides real-time access to structured and unstructured data without the need for duplication. It might pull information from CRM systems, external databases, or knowledge articles.

• Execute Agent Actions — With help from the Atlas Reasoning Engine, the Agent evaluates the task, determines the best approach, and executes the necessary actions. For instance, it could find a delay in the shipment, identify the cause, and generate an appropriate response for the customer.

• Consolidate and Respond — The Agent combines all the relevant information into a clear, concise reply, delivering the solution directly to the customer through a preferred channel, such as chat or email.

Agents are programmed to respect defined security and privacy parameters. This ensures sensitive information remains protected. Here is a Service Agent in action, helping customers book an experience in a resort.

Agentforce offers a range of out-of-the-box agents designed to address specific business challenges across service, sales, marketing, and ecommerce. These agents go beyond simple chatbots, offering dynamic, autonomous solutions tailored to specific needs. Let's explore the different types of agents in Salesforce Agentforce and how they add value:

Service Agent

The Service Agent improves customer support by autonomously resolving issues like refunds, troubleshooting, and inquiries without pre-set conversation paths. A Service Agent tracks a delayed shipment, provides the latest status to the customer, and initiates a follow-up for resolution, all within seconds.

Sales Development Representative (SDR)

The SDR agent engages with prospects 24/7, answering questions, overcoming objections, and scheduling meetings using CRM data. When a prospect inquires about pricing after hours, the SDR provides details, qualifies them, and books a meeting with a sales rep for the next morning.

Sales Coach Agent

The Sales Coach helps sales teams refine pitches and objections with personalized role-play sessions using AI and Salesforce data. A sales rep practices handling a high-stakes negotiation, and the Sales Coach simulates the buyer's objections while offering real-time feedback.

Buyer Agent

The Buyer Agent enhances B2B purchasing by helping customers find products, place orders, and track shipments seamlessly. A business buyer logs into a sales portal, and the Buyer Agent identifies relevant products, confirms availability, and places the order in minutes.

Personal Shopper

The Personal Shopper provides tailored recommendations and helps customers navigate ecommerce sites or messaging apps. A customer browsing an online store asks for gift ideas, and the Personal Shopper suggests the perfect product based on their preferences and past purchases.

Campaign Optimizer

The Campaign Optimizer automates and enhances marketing campaigns, from strategy to personalization and performance tracking. During a holiday sale, it identifies low-performing ads and reallocates the budget to high-performing channels in real time, boosting ROI.

AI agents and copilots are both designed to improve productivity, but they differ significantly in capabilities. Copilots are reactive tools that assist with tasks, such as drafting emails or summarizing content, but they don't understand or interact with enterprise data. In contrast, agents are deeply integrated with business systems, accessing real-time data to perform tasks like resolving customer issues, qualifying leads, or automating workflows. This allows agents to provide tailored, context-aware responses, while copilots rely on humans to take action.

Another key difference is execution. Copilots suggest actions but cannot perform them autonomously. For example, a copilot might recommend sending an email, but it requires a person to finalize and send it. Agents, on the other hand, can execute tasks independently. Powered by tools like the Atlas Reasoning Engine, they analyze requests, break them into actionable steps, and carry them out seamlessly. From processing refunds to scheduling appointments, agents handle complex, multi-step tasks with minimal human involvement.

Agents are also proactive and adaptive. Unlike copilots, which respond only to direct prompts, agents can identify opportunities, build action plans, and take initiatives on their own. For instance, an agent might detect an upselling opportunity, craft a personalized email, and schedule follow-ups — all autonomously. This makes them a transformative tool for scaling operations and improving efficiency across sales, service, and marketing.

While copilots are useful for isolated tasks, they fall short in enterprise-wide applications. AI agents, with their ability to integrate, execute, and scale, represent a new era of automation. By embedding into workflows and connecting with enterprise data, agents enable businesses to move beyond assistance and into full-scale autonomy, driving meaningful outcomes at scale.

Enabling Agentforce in your org is an extremely simple two step process

Click on the Gear icon → Setup → Einstein Setup → Turn on Einstein Toggle

Now, refresh the page

Setup Quick Find → Agents → Enable Einstein Copilot for Salesforce

Creating an AI agent involves defining its purpose — Topics, equipping it with the right tools — Grounding based on relevant data, and ensuring it can handle specific tasks — Defining Agent Actions.

Defining Topics for Salesforce Agentforce AI Agents

Topics determine the tasks the agent can perform. For instance, the “Reservation Management” topic involves tasks like checking seat availability and confirming bookings, where as "Account Management" topic invoves managing account related inquiries such as updating contact details or resetting passwords and "FAQ" topic inovles answering questions about return policies etc.

How Agentforce AI Agents Use Data Grounding for Accuracy

Grounding an agent requires building a data library that acts as the Agent's knowledge base. It includes the information the agent needs to provide accurate answers and perform tasks effectively. Data library could be Knowledge articles about the company's policies, Product catalogs for assisting with customer inquiries, Structured and unstructured data, such as CRM records, emails, or external data sources.

A crucial part of this process is Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which dynamically pulls relevant data from these sources to enhance the agent's responses. Unlike static AI systems, RAG ensures that responses are accurate and grounded by leveraging your business's own trusted data. By working in conjunction with a vector database — a specialized type of database that stores information in a numerical format optimized for AI, RAG enables the agent to retrieve and apply the most relevant information when prompted. This dramatically reduces errors, such as hallucinations or irrelevant outputs, and ensures trustworthy, precise responses.

For example, If a customer asks, “What's your warranty policy?” the agent, powered by RAG, retrieves the specific details from the company's knowledge base stored in the vector database. It consolidates this information into an accurate, customer-ready reply, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

Key Agent Actions in Salesforce Agentforce: Automation at Work

Agent actions are the steps the agent takes to complete the tasks defined by its topics. When creating an agent, you specify which actions to run for different situations. Here are the types of Agent actions:

• Flows — It runs Salesforce workflows to automate processes. For instance, a flow could be used to escalate a high-priority case automatically. If the flow requires parameters, such as a case ID or priority level, these are passed from the agent. The Agent automatically asks for case ID from the user.

• Prompt Templates — It fetches data and provides structured output. For instance, a prompt template might retrieve customer purchase history to suggest related products. The required inputs (e.g., customer ID) are either collected from the user or fetched from existing data.

• Apex Invocable Methods — It executes custom Apex code to handle more advanced actions. For instance, An invocable method might calculate a shipping estimate based on product weight and destination.

Each action may require specific details, such as a reservation date or customer ID. These inputs can come from the user's input (e.g., “I need a table for four on Friday”) or existing system data (e.g., the customer's stored preferences).

Case Study: How Wiley Achieved 213% ROI with Salesforce Agentforce

Wiley Problem Statement

Wiley faced surges in customer service demand during peak times, overwhelming agents with repetitive tasks like password resets and payment inquiries, which affected efficiency and customer satisfaction.

How Wiley Used Agentforce

Agentforce handled repetitive queries like account access issues, freeing human agents to focus on complex cases and improving case resolution by over 40%. It genereated AI drafted responses, created case summaries, and reduced onboarding time for seasonal agents by 50%, saving $230,000 in costs. Prompt Builder enabled reusable prompts, cutting down response times during peak seasons. Automation helped identify supplier-related issues and provided actionable data to enhance product offerings and supplier performance.

Your takeaway from Wiley

By automating tasks and leveraging AI insights, Wiley improved efficiency, saved costs, and delivered better customer and employee experiences.

Case Study: OpenTable Transforms Customer Service with Agentforce

Problem Statement

As OpenTable grew globally, it faced challenges with repetitive support tasks, such as reservation changes and loyalty point redemptions. Agents struggled with fragmented data across systems, leading to inefficiencies and limiting their ability to focus on meaningful customer interactions.

How OpenTable Used Agentforce

Agentforce, integrated with Service Cloud, automated repetitive processes like managing reservations and loyalty programs, allowing agents to focus on complex cases. OpenTable unified its fragmented data into a single platform, giving agents a 360-degree view of diners, enabling personalized interactions across channels. Agentforce generated case summaries, automated workflows with Flows, and provided AI-powered recommendations to streamline complex issue resolution, such as double bookings.

Your takeaway from OpenTable

By leveraging Agentforce and Service Cloud, OpenTable automated routine inquiries, unified customer data, and empowered agents to deliver faster, more meaningful support, significantly enhancing global customer satisfaction.

Are you looking for a way to streamline operations, automate repetitive tasks, and deliver amazing customer experiences? Agentforce is here to help! But to understand if Agentforce is the right fit for your organisation, you would have to evaluate on several areas such as the need to automate routine workflows, criticality of Real-Time data to your business, need a scalable customer support, readiness to move beyond traditional AI tools.

Agentforce is right for businesses ready to embrace intelligent automation and transform their operations. If your organization values efficiency, scalability, and personalization, Agentforce can empower you to deliver smarter, faster, and more impactful customer experiences. However, if your needs are limited to simple task management or basic conversational AI, a less sophisticated solution might suffice.

The best way to determine if Agentforce aligns with your goals is to evaluate your current processes and identify areas where autonomy and intelligent decision-making could create the most value.

Salesforce Agentforce represents a groundbreaking leap in business automation, seamlessly blending AI autonomy with human expertise. By enabling AI agents to perform complex tasks, interact with real-time data, and make decisions independently, Agentforce empowers businesses to scale operations, improve efficiency, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. From enhancing customer support to optimizing marketing campaigns, Agentforce transforms how organizations operate, ensuring smarter and faster results. Ready to revolutionize your workflows? Agentforce is your key to the future of intelligent business automation.

• OpenTable boosts customer service with Agentforce.
• Wiley sees 213% return on investment with Salesforce.
• How the Atlas Reasoning Engine Powers Agentforce | Salesforce US
• How to Get a Complete AI System
• What Are AI Agents? Benefits, Examples, Types | Salesforce US
• How Does Agentforce Work?
• Salesforce's Agentforce Is Here: Trusted, Autonomous AI Agents to Scale Your Workforce - Salesforce