At Salesforce Futures, we are constantly thinking about the broader implications of autonomous AI agents for Salesforce, its customers, and society as a whole. This work requires a future-back, outside-in approach and a willingness to consider a wide range of short-term and long-term possibilities. 

By embracing this perspective, we find ourselves imagining a fast-approaching future where agents can control other agents, buy goods and services on behalf of humans, negotiate with one another, and even create new agents. 

Heading into the New Year, here are some of our thoughts and predictions about how autonomous AI agents are likely to change work — and the workplace — as we know it in 2025. 

Imagine a world where agents can control other agents, buy goods and services on behalf of humans, negotiate with one another, and even create new agents.

Mick Costigan, VP, Salesforce Futures

Prediction 1: Agents working with agents (without you!)

2025 will be the year multi-agent systems take center stage, moving beyond single-agent applications like sales or service. These orchestrations will tackle high-impact challenges, like building sales or marketing campaigns, that typically require the involvement of multiple business disciplines. Unlike simple copilots, multi-agent systems will collaborate with one another, adapt, and execute — enabling enterprises to solve complex problems with trust and scale.

Prediction 2: Meet the Agent-in-Chief

For AI agents to begin working with other agents, some system of agentic orchestration will also be necessary to keep AI labor from running amok. As such, we envision the rise of chief-of-staff agents for overseeing other agents and ensuring humans maintain control over complex networks of AI systems.

Prediction 3: New norms for a new age(nt)

With AI agents taking on increasingly human-like roles, new cultural norms will emerge, especially in the workplace. There will be a need to navigate concerns around over-reliance on AI and its impact on social connection. For example, while AI could help workers be more productive and connected, it could also replace human interactions and create unhealthy dependencies. The conversation around how AI-human relationships can benefit humans will become critical as companies pivot to AI-driven consumer-facing products.

Prediction 4: Goodbye Google, hello agents

AI agents are poised to revolutionize search, moving beyond simply finding information to completing complex tasks. Today, search engines help users discover content, products, and internal resources. But often, search is just a step in achieving larger goals, like making a purchase or completing a project.

As AI agents evolve, they’ll handle entire processes, reshaping how brands interact with consumers and how employees collaborate. This shift will require businesses to adapt with new agent-compatible communication channels to stay connected in an agent-driven world.

More information:

• Read more about these predictions in the third edition of the Futures Magazine
• Check out more insights from the Salesforce Futures team
• Learn more about Agentforce, how Agentforce is inventing the future of agents, and personal AI agents
• Peek into the future of AI-human collaboration at work
• Find more predictions from Salesforce experts

Salesforce today reported that global online sales for the 2024 holiday season (Nov. 1 – Dec 15) have reached $849 billion, a strong 4% year-over-year (YoY) increase. With just nine days left until Christmas, the data shows retailers are deploying a host of new strategies, including AI agents and Buy Online Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS), to make the most of consumer spending momentum.

“As retailers work to cash in on the final spending frenzy, AI agents are a lifeline,” said Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights and Strategy for Salesforce. “Retailers like Saks — which have tapped Agentforce to augment their customer support teams — are showing up for shoppers without driving up their costs. By handling questions, order issues, and recommendations with a personalized touch, they are making last-minute gifting feel effortless. These retailers will win a bigger slice of the holiday pie.” 

Retailers like Saks — who have tapped Agentforce to augment their customer support teams — are showing up for shoppers without driving up their costs.

Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights and Strategy for Salesforce

In the final push to Christmas, Salesforce predicts that agents — powered by trusted customer data — will help drive shoppers to the buy button with personalized engagements and support. Since Cyber Week, retailers have increased their use of AI and agents by 23%, and AI is on track to influence more than $200 billion in holiday sales. Salesforce also predicts that BOPIS, where shoppers buy gifts online and pick them up either in-store or curbside, will double the week before Christmas as shoppers race to get last-minute gifts.

The Salesforce Shopping Index analyzes data from over 1.5 billion consumers on retail sites on the Salesforce Platform, including 29 of the top 30 U.S. online retailers. This data encompasses commerce, marketing, and customer service insights, providing a comprehensive view of holiday spending trends.

Early indicators: Five predictions based on 2024 holiday data

• Agents supercharge holiday sales: Retailers are leveraging AI, including agents, as a way to drive efficiency and personalization this holiday season.
  • Since Cyber Monday, retailers have increased their use of generative AI and agents by 23% week over week (WoW). 
  • Since Nov. 1, AI has influenced 19% of all global online orders through actions like customized promotions, order support, and product recommendations.
  • Businesses leveraging generative AI and agents for customer service during the holiday season saw nearly double the engagement growth compared to those without these capabilities (38% vs. 21%).
  • Salesforce Prediction: AI is on track to influence upward of $200 billion in holiday sales for the full holiday season, a 12% increase YoY. 

Businesses leveraging generative AI and agents for customer service during the holiday season saw nearly double the engagement growth compared to those without these capabilities (38% vs. 21%).

• BOPIS is a lifeline for last-minute shoppers: The BOPIS option has increased in popularity as consumers avoid long lines and shipping deadlines.
  • BOPIS accounted for 21% of online orders in the week following Cyber Monday. 
  • After the ground shipping deadline for Christmas delivery passes, retailers with BOPIS often experience 5-7 times higher online sales growth than those without it.
  • Salesforce Prediction: In the weekend before Christmas, the number of BOPIS orders will double compared to the rest of the season, accounting for nearly 40% of all online orders for retailers leveraging the in-store fulfillment feature. 

• Retailers beware, returns are on the rise: Consumers are being more judicious about their final holiday purchases and making their own price adjustments to stretch their budgets.
  • Since Nov. 1, about 8.3% of purchases have been returned, up from 6.6% in 2023.
  • The global return rate is expected to peak at 13% during Christmas and Boxing Week, up from 12% in 2023. 
  • Salesforce Prediction: Over $133 billion worth of orders purchased this holiday season will be returned, which agents can help retailers manage after the holidays. 

• Mobile wallets, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) simplify checkout for shoppers:
  • Mobile wallet payments such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal continue to see high adoption, with usage increasing 16% YoY globally the week following Cyber Monday.
  • 6% of all orders since Nov. 1 were purchased with BNPL options.
  • Salesforce Prediction: Nearly a quarter (24%) of all global holiday season orders will be purchased with mobile wallet payment options. 

• Mobile dominates holiday shopping: Mobile devices have become the primary channel for holiday shopping, and adoption continues to increase as consumer experiences improve.
  • 78% of all global digital site traffic came from mobile devices since Nov. 1.
  • Mobile also accounted for 69% of all online orders since Nov. 1.
  • Salesforce Prediction: 83% of all online traffic and 76% of all online orders will be driven by mobile from Dec. 23-25.

Data Cloud powers personalized customer interactions: Leveraging their vast customer data and the combined power of Agentforce, retailers are harmonizing customer information into a single unified customer profile that helps them drive insights and deliver intelligent, actionable, and personalized engagements to shoppers in real time.

• Data Cloud saw significant YoY growth in customer records ingested during Cyber Week (+78% YoY), showing the industry is rapidly growing the amount of data they’re using to drive business outcomes.
• Data Cloud processed over 300 trillion records (+85% YoY) in Cyber Week alone, and helped retailers action over 94 billion profiles across various platforms and channels like Marketing Cloud and Google. This enabled retailers to deliver targeted marketing, personalized recommendations, and optimized inventory management — all crucial during the busy holiday season.
• Salesforce Prediction: With more data than ever, retailers will seek out a unified data platform that allows them to more seamlessly connect, harmonize, and action against real-time customer insights, allowing for personalization across every touchpoint.

Explore further:

• Visit the Shopping Insights HQ for additional holiday data
• View Cyber Week 2024 insights
• Check out Salesforce’s earlier predictions for the holiday season 

2024 Salesforce holiday insights and predictions methodology

Powered by Agentforce, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud, Salesforce analyzed aggregated data to produce holiday insights from the activity of more than 1.5 billion global shoppers across more than 89 countries, with a focus on 18 key markets: the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), Switzerland, Latin America (LAM), the Middle East and Africa (MEA), Eastern Europe, Belgium, and the Nordics. This battery of benchmarks provides a deep look into the last nine quarters and the current state of digital commerce. Several factors are applied to extrapolate macroeconomic figures for the broader retail industry. These results are not indicative of Salesforce performance.

The prediction data that we present are from proprietary Salesforce research. The calculations we use blend first-party and third-party data, as well as several market assumptions, to generate the data points we present.

Ninety-one percent of small and medium businesses (SMBs) with artificial intelligence (AI) say it boosts their revenue, according to a new Salesforce survey. The global data, gathered from 3,350 leaders of SMBs, highlights how forward-looking businesses are using AI to drive growth amid the meteoric rise of autonomous AI agents.

Why it matters: This new research follows an August 2024 study published by Slack that found SMBs can lose valuable time to technology inefficiencies, uncovering a need for AI solutions that boost productivity. 

One such example is reMarkable, a rapidly-growing Norwegian premium paper tablet scale-up that chose Salesforce’s Agentforce to scale their customer service operations. With Agentforce, reMarkable will be able to handle a soaring volume of customer inquiries, providing a white-glove experience at scale by proactively addressing common questions and seamlessly escalating complex issues to human agents. With humans and agents working together, reMarkable can quickly and cost-effectively scale customer service without compromising quality.

Their success is creating a blueprint for how small businesses can leverage AI, including Agentforce, a new layer on the Salesforce Platform that enables organizations to build and deploy autonomous AI agents, to drive growth.

Kris Billmaier, EVP, Salesforce

The Salesforce perspective: “AI and agents are reshaping what’s possible across business functions like marketing, sales, service, and commerce,” said Kris Billmaier, EVP, Salesforce. “SMBs adopting AI are seeing significant returns and doubling down on their investments. Their success is creating a blueprint for how small businesses can leverage AI, including Agentforce, a new layer on the Salesforce Platform that enables organizations to build and deploy autonomous AI agents, to drive growth.”

AI investments are a sign of growth

Today, 75% of SMBs are at least experimenting with AI, with growing businesses leading in adoption (83%). This gap appears set to widen — 78% of growing SMBs plan to increase their AI investment next year, versus 55% of their declining peers. 

The different approaches reflect broader business priorities: while stagnant and declining SMBs focus primarily on customer acquisition, growing SMBs invest in improving the customer experiences and technology capabilities that drive sustainable growth.

SMB leaders who haven’t adopted AI may have a blind spot about its prevalence: While 80% of those using AI believe the technology is commonly used among their peers, only a third of non-users agree.

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“AI is leveling the playing field between SMBs and larger enterprises,” said Billmaier. “Small and medium-sized businesses using AI see real returns across their operations, from improved efficiency to stronger customer relationships. Those who wait too long to invest risk falling behind as early adopters build their advantage.”

SMBs call AI a ‘game-changer’

SMBs with AI have a bright outlook for the technology: 78% say it will be a game-changer for their company. Already, 87% of respondents with AI say it helps them scale operations, while 86% see improved margins. The technology is transforming both customer-facing and operational functions, with top use cases including:

1. Marketing campaign optimization 
2. Content generation 
3. Automated recommendations for customers 
4. Natural language search tools 
5. Automated service chatbots

Service teams are also reducing case resolution times, while sales teams are using AI to automatically draft personalized prospecting emails and recommend next best actions for reps. Meanwhile, marketing teams are increasing conversion rates with AI-based lead scoring, decreasing unsubscribe rates through automated email lists, and more.

How leading SMBs maximize AI success

The research also identifies clear patterns in how successful SMBs approach AI implementation.

Data Foundation First

AI systems are trained on and continuously use data, so data quality directly determines results; inaccurate data can lead to harmful flaws. Seventy-four percent of growing SMBs are increasing data management investments, compared to 47% of declining SMBs. 

“Some people don’t really understand how data is going to impact the business in the future,” said Dan Atkinson, COO & Co-Founder of Salesforce SMB customer MedLogiq. “It’s about how this data will be valuable to the company five years down the road. We want to make sure we’re not losing that information.”

Integrated Approach

When systems work together seamlessly, AI can access and act on data across the entire business, from sales and marketing to service and the back office. Compared to SMBs with declining revenue, growing SMBs are twice as likely to have an integrated tech stack (66% vs 32%), dodging the problems of siloed data and inefficiencies common to having many standalone applications. 

Security and Trust

Security ranks as the top technology challenge for SMBs, reflecting the growing stakes of managing sensitive business data as SMBs expand their AI capabilities. This shapes their purchase decisions: 81% of SMB leaders say they would spend more on technology from trusted vendors.

The next wave: AI agents

The foundations SMBs are building today — such as data management, integrated systems, security, and trusted partnerships — also position these companies for the next wave of AI: agents that can learn, adapt, and take action across the business. 

“When SMBs follow AI best practices, they’re not only optimizing their current technology. They’re also positioning themselves for the emerging era of AI agents, in which agents can execute work by searching for relevant data, analyzing this data to formulate a plan, and then actioning the plan — without human intervention,” said Billmaier. “SMBs that have built strong foundations are perfectly positioned to tap into solutions like Agentforce to augment their staff, scale their workforce, and lower costs.”

More information:

• Read the full Small & Medium Business Trends report
• Discover how small and growing businesses can get started on Salesforce Starter
• Explore the Stat Library, Salesforce’s bookmarkable database of stats for journalists

Methodology

Data in this report is from a double-anonymous survey conducted August 3 through September 16, 2024. The survey generated 3,350 responses from leaders of small, medium, and growth businesses (200 employees and under) across North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. For more demographic information, please refer to the full “Small & Medium Business Trends” report.

At the same time, the two industry leaders have been aligning data and AI related initiatives to build an ecosystem for supporting AI agent delivery. In the last year, for example, the companies created zero copy functionality in Data Cloud with Amazon Redshift and integrated Salesforce’s Model Builder’s BYO LLM (bring your own LLM) capabilities with Amazon Bedrock. 

“By integrating data and AI capabilities across our platforms, Salesforce and AWS are building a strong foundation for the future of agentic systems,” said Brian Landsman, EVP of Global Business Development and Technology Partnerships at Salesforce. “With a majority of large companies planning to implement agents by 2027, it’s critical for organizations to be able to turn to trusted, innovative partners to help them build a successful agentic enterprise.” 

By integrating data and AI capabilities across our platforms, Salesforce and AWS are building a strong foundation for the future of agentic systems.

Brian Landsman, EVP of Global Business Development and Technology Partnerships at Salesforce

Unleashing AI accessibility for all  

Salesforce is ensuring that its innovations are easily available to customers by offering AI  technology through the AWS Marketplace, including Agentforce, the agentic layer of the Salesforce Platform for deploying autonomous AI agents across any business. All Salesforce clouds are available on AWS Marketplace in 23 countries, simplifying the procurement process and helping customers easily unlock value and maximize their existing technology investments. This offering allows companies to manage their IT spending, access flexible pricing options, and take advantage of a streamlined billing process, all through a single platform.

This seamless experience empowers businesses to focus on using technology rather than navigating complex procurement processes. As Salesforce and AWS continue to build on these offerings, they’re setting the stage for a new era of enterprise that relies heavily on data and agentic capabilities‌ — ‌allowing businesses to execute complex tasks more efficiently and effectively.

“Our partnership with Salesforce empowers our mutual customers to realize the full potential of their data and AI investments. Together, we’re delivering immediate, reliable, and actionable insights with agentic AI, enabling customers to automate strategically and deliver more value from every part of their business,” said Chris Grusz, Managing Director of Technology Partnerships, AWS. “It’s a promise to fundamentally change the way enterprises operate and thrive.”

Powering tomorrow’s agentic enterprises

Companies like Buyers Edge Platform are benefitting from the Salesforce-AWS expanded partnership with more streamlined data management, increased productivity, and new AI capabilities. The integration work is helping businesses scale at unprecedented rates and is providing the structured and unstructured data agentic systems they need to perform and deliver for enterprises. 

For example, Salesforce Data Cloud, enhanced by AWS’s cloud capabilities, allows for zero-copy, bidirectional integrations. Tied to the Zero Copy Partner Network, this technology provides a comprehensive, real-time view of a company’s data without cumbersome processes like data duplication or reformatting. This has proven transformative for Buyer’s Edge, a leading software and analytics company providing data-driven insights and technology to the foodservice industry. 

Over the past five years, Buyers Edge has acquired 23 companies, creating a fragmented data landscape that had become increasingly complex to manage. But with zero copy technology, Buyers Edge has been able to streamline data from more than 30 disparate sources‌ — ‌including Amazon Redshift‌ — ‌into one unified system that helped them simplify data management and gain full visibility into all of the organization’s data.

“The Salesforce-AWS partnership is enabling rapid growth for us. By unifying allowable data from across our 20+ software offerings and leveraging zero copy technology, we’re able to leverage unified data to drive more powerful insights for our customers,” said Josh Tackett, CTO at Buyers Edge. “Without this type of technology, we were fighting an uphill battle trying to map disparate systems together, but now we have a seamless tool to combine our data which allows us to focus on building more impactful products.”

By unifying allowable data from across our 20+ software offerings and leveraging zero copy technology, we’re able to leverage unified data to drive more powerful insights for our customers.

Josh Tackett, CTO at Buyers Edge

The impact of the Salesforce-AWS partnership extends beyond individual enterprises — it’s also reshaping entire industries. By equipping organizations with data-driven, AI-powered solutions, the two companies are helping sectors like automotive unlock new levels of operational intelligence and efficiency. For example, Salesforce Connected Vehicle has data integrations with AWS IoT FleetWise, which enables automakers to easily integrate vehicle and fleet data that streamlines connected car experiences while removing complex manual integrations. These capabilities are built on a shared foundation of data that flows freely across platforms, allowing businesses to capitalize on emerging technologies without having to overhaul existing infrastructures.

As more industries move toward agentic enterprises, the Salesforce-AWS partnership will help businesses deploy customized agents that can navigate multiple systems, databases, and applications with ease. These autonomous agents have the potential to revolutionize how industries operate, creating efficiencies and improving outcomes on a monumental scale.

Looking ahead: a partnership built for tomorrow

Customers will continue to benefit from the partnership between Salesforce and AWS, with more innovations and regional support planned for 2025. With advancements laser-focused on privacy, compliance, and building trust in the agentic era, customers can expect future updates, including enhancements to the Zero Copy Partner Network and new integrations like Private Connect and Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect.

As the partnership evolves, companies are positioned to harness the combined power of agentic AI and data in ways that not only drive efficiency but also open doors to new business models. For technology leaders and enterprises worldwide, the collaboration represents an opportunity to embrace the future of AI‌ — ‌a future where agents powered by trusted data can make decisions, execute tasks, and drive meaningful outcomes at scale. By enabling businesses to unify data, automate processes, and create a powerful environment for agentic innovation, Salesforce and AWS are helping organizations embrace the full potential of their digital landscapes.

More information:

• Read more about Agentforce Partner Network
• Learn more about the Salesforce and AWS expanded partnership
• Check out more Salesforce and AWS product integrations at AWS re:Invent here
• Get started with Salesforce and AWS

AI contributed to 17% of global purchases in the last seven weeks

Salesforce today reported that the upcoming Cyber Week is expected to drive $311 billion in global sales as consumers eagerly await holiday deals, with the use of AI and agents set to influence up to 19% of those orders.

The Salesforce Shopping Index — which analyzes data from 1.5 billion global shoppers, more than 1.5 trillion page views, and hundreds of millions of unique SKUs on the Salesforce Customer 360 platform — showed that since the start of October, digital retailers using generative AI and agents increased their average order value by 7% compared to those without the technology ($117 vs. $109). AI and agents were also responsible for driving 17% of global orders through personalized recommendations, targeted promotions, and smarter customer service.

Retailers using AI-powered agents during this time frame also doubled customer service engagement, addressing complex cases faster as 30% of consumers prefer agents for speedier service. 

“Agents have the potential to transform the holiday season by helping retailers provide personalized, timely, and efficient service to shoppers when they need it most,” said Michael Affronti, SVP and GM of Commerce Cloud. “There is a wide open opportunity for digital retailers to use AI for personal shopper agents that help consumers find exactly what they’re looking for and continue to make the path to purchase an easy one.” 

Agents have the potential to transform the holiday season by helping retailers provide personalized, timely, and efficient service to shoppers when they need it most.

Michael Affronti, SVP and GM of Commerce Cloud

Salesforce’s Cyber Week 2024 predictions: Reviewing real-time aggregate data stemming from Agentforce, Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, Salesforce expects to see four major trends during this year’s most critical shopping week:

• AI steers the shopping cart: AI and agents will likely influence 19% of Cyber Week orders, accounting for $61 billion in global sales. 
• Cyber sales surge: Cyber Week sales are expected to reach $311 billion worldwide, accounting for 23% of all holiday purchases in 2024, and $75 billion in the United States. 
• Discount rates are expected to be attractive: Average discounts will likely peak at 28% globally and 30% for the U.S., fueling 5% YoY sales growth.
  • Top discounts rates globally are expected in:
    • Beauty & Makeup – 38%
    • Skincare –  33%
    • General Apparel – 33% 
• Mobile rules digital checkouts: Mobile orders will make up 70% of sales, driven by better on-the-go experiences in recent years, and presenting a new conversion opportunity with AI agents on mobile messaging apps. 

Driving the news: Separately, a recent Salesforce survey found that 45% of global consumers are waiting to make purchases until Cyber Week, beginning November 26, to take advantage of the best deals of the season. This points to an opportunity for retailers to capitalize on shoppers’ excitement and drive more conversions with discounts and agentic customer service experiences. 

In addition, the Salesforce Shopping Index’s early holiday findings, captured between Oct. 1 and Nov. 14, showed:

• Global sales are growing: Global online sales dipped 1% year-over-year (YoY) during the last seven weeks, but rose 8% YoY in the first week of November, suggesting that consumer interest in holiday shopping is picking up pace. 
• Highest-growing sales categories:  
  • Makeup (+10% YoY)
  • Active Footwear (+9% YoY)
  • General Handbags and Luggage (+8% YoY)
• Consumers are interested in AI agents for faster customer service: Since early October, retailers who have invested in AI-powered service agents have seen double the rate of customer service engagement compared to those who have not invested in AI-powered agents.
  • This growth is an early indicator that agents can take on a higher and more complex case load and adequately serve customer needs.
  • Customers, meantime, seem open to engaging with agents. A full 30% of consumers said they would work with an AI agent if it meant faster service.
• AI and agents augment the shopping experience: While a relatively new technology, major retailers are already employing AI agents to help improve shopping experiences, including:
  • Brands like Saks are using Agentforce to streamline routine tasks such as order tracking, enabling customer service teams to focus on delivering a highly customized shopping experience that drives conversion.
  • Nearly one-fifth (24%) of consumers also said they’re already comfortable with AI agents shopping for them.
• Discounts and consumer demand are ramping up: Discounts peaked at an average rate of 20% in the first week of November – a 17% YoY increase, indicating that retailers are gearing up for a competitive holiday season.
  • Online orders have also seen a 4% YoY increase, signaling a positive shift following a year of reduced consumer spending.
• Chinese shopping marketplaces entice consumers with low prices: Sixty-seven percent of buyers who use apps like Shein, Temu, and TikTok Shop reported that they are planning to make holiday purchases on them this season.
  • The top marketplace option for shoppers is Temu, with 40% of global consumers saying they’ve made between two and five purchases on this marketplace in the last year.
• Returns present a challenge and opportunity for retailers: Returns in October and November were 33% higher than the same time frame last year, forcing retailers to take a closer look at their retention strategies and return policies to avoid losses.

Salesforce perspective: “While there was a slow start to shopping in October, November is kicking off with enthusiasm. With nearly half of shoppers waiting to make purchases during Cyber Week and nearly a quarter of all holiday sales expected to take place over these seven days, this is the time for retailers to pull out all the stops with the help of AI and agents.” – Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights and Strategy

Explore further:

• Visit Salesforce’s Shopping Insights HQ for real-time Cyber Week results
• Discover how to win over consumers this holiday shopping season here
• Find Salesforce’s earlier 2024 holiday forecasts here

2024 Salesforce holiday insights and predictions methodology

Powered by Agentforce, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud, Salesforce analyzed aggregated data to produce holiday insights from the activity of more than 1.5 billion global shoppers across more than 89 countries, with a focus on 18 key markets: the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), Switzerland, LAM (Latin America), MEA (Middle East and Africa), Eastern Europe, Belgium, and the Nordics. This battery of benchmarks provides a deep look into the last nine quarters and the current state of digital commerce. Several factors are applied to extrapolate macroeconomic figures for the broader retail industry, and these results are not indicative of Salesforce performance.

The prediction data that we present are from proprietary Salesforce research. The calculations we use blend first-party and third-party data, as well as several market assumptions, to generate the data points we present. 

Salesforce Data Cloud is the heart of Agentforce’s next-generation capabilities. A hyperscale data engine on the Salesforce Platform, it provides all of the data and metadata Agentforce needs to produce actionable insights that are grounded in customer records. This simply isn’t possible with other agents or copilots because they cannot access the data needed to provide a complete view of a customer. More importantly, Data Cloud overcomes many of the issues enterprise customers face when trying to integrate their agents and customer data, including: 

• Data Silos: Businesses struggle to create seamless customer experiences with data distributed across different systems, with much of this data stored in unstructured formats — like customer and employee interactions in Slack, PDF, Google documents, videos, and support tickets. As such, retrieving relevant information quickly and effectively has been particularly difficult, limiting the ability of support teams to respond to customer needs in real time. 
• Lack of Trusted Context: To make more informed decisions, agents need a thorough understanding of the customer journey, interactions, and preferences, which requires a unified data foundation. Unstructured data is growing at a rate of 55% to 65% each year. According to IDC, in 2022, 90% of data generated by organizations was unstructured, yet only 18% of organizations can take advantage of unstructured data. Scattered enterprise data and knowledge that can’t be integrated and governed results in disjointed insights. This makes it nearly impossible to generate contextually aware and trusted intelligence that understands business and customer needs. 
• Poor Actionability: Insights are valuable, but being able to quickly do something with them is what makes them priceless. Many organizations face delays and bottlenecks in moving from insights to action, preventing them from responding to market demands as well as employee and customer needs. For AI to generate reliable insights, it needs trustworthy and governed data. Without precision, context, accuracy, and regulatory compliance, do-it-yourself (DIY) AI models and copilots end up producing incomplete or unreliable results that ultimately erode user trust. 

The Data Cloud advantage for Agentforce

With Data Cloud, Agentforce not only has access to every relevant piece of trusted enterprise knowledge (files, videos, images, websites, tickets) and data (across systems, lakes, warehouses, and Customer 360), but also understands its context, enabling it to make intelligent, actionable, and trusted recommendations in real time. That’s where Agentforce becomes incredibly powerful.

Data Cloud enables this by going beyond traditional CDPs to address challenges with data integration, contextual intelligence, and automated actions in real time. As a hyperscale data platform, it serves as the trusted data foundation for Agentforce and the broader Salesforce Platform. Data Cloud drives hyperpersonalized experiences across the entire Customer 360 by seamlessly integrating structured and unstructured data, data lakes, warehouses, and CRM data. An open and extensible platform, it’s also integrated with Salesforce’s Zero Copy Partner Network ecosystem, so data can be actioned in Agentforce and across the Salesforce Platform. FedEx, for instance, is creating customer journeys to improve customer experiences and grow revenue by connecting all Salesforce clouds with Data Cloud. FedEx trusts Salesforce’s end-to-end data platform to seamlessly integrate with its existing data lakes — without duplicating data — thanks to zero copy. 

Data Cloud represents an ambitious vision to provide a centralized data asset encompassing data management, warehousing, workflow, and AI capabilities that connect the federated Salesforce ecosystem.

Forrester, The Forrester Wave™: Customer Data Platforms For B2C, Q3 2024, September 2024, authored by Joe Stanhope

Data Cloud maximizes the potential of Agentforce by safely grounding agents in an organization’s proprietary customer data using industry-leading Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and hybrid search capabilities. Data Cloud’s built-in RAG capabilities add real-time insights and context from unstructured data like past emails, support tickets, product photos, voicemails, and other sources, while its hybrid search identifies the right knowledge article based on customer context to help Agentforce resolve issues accurately. 

Data Cloud can also activate data for AI, automation, and analytics, driving actions seamlessly within the flow of work. Wyndham Hotels and Resorts improved handle times, revenue per agent, and customer satisfaction by giving service teams a unified view of guest profiles, thanks to connected reservation, loyalty, and CRM data in Data Cloud.

Finally, with Data Cloud, teams can build trust with customers through a governed and secure platform that natively manages data access, security, and compliance.

Salesforce made a compelling case for elevating Data Cloud as the critical component for building agents. Whether Agentforce retrieves context, accurate information; evaluates user queries for clarity and relevance; DC ensures that the action plan is grounded on trusted data & is critical to its success.

Tapan Patel, IDC, Dreamforce 2024: Salesforce Data Cloud Lays the Data Strategy Foundation Needed for Agentforce, October 2024

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How Salesforce Data Cloud powers Agentforce

Data Cloud is central to Agentforce’s capabilities, bringing together structured and unstructured data from a multitude of sources in real time. By providing the Customer 360 with deep platform integration, trusted contextual data for Agentforce, and autonomous actions in the flow of work, Data Cloud ensures Agentforce has access to the most comprehensive customer view. 

Customer 360 with deep platform integration

Data Cloud surfaces trusted customer data in all Salesforce Customer 360 applications, creating a foundation for personalized customer experiences and real-time analytics, triggering data-driven actions and workflows, and safely driving AI across all Salesforce apps. With its zero-copy technology and MuleSoft connectors, Data Cloud can ingest data from hundreds of diverse data sources, including data lakes and warehouses. Its native vector database converts various data formats‌ — ‌PDFs, texts, calls, voicemails, videos, and images that are often trapped in 90% of customer data‌ — ‌into readily usable data and harmonizes it with structured data to create comprehensive customer profiles that are stored as metadata (data about data, such as area codes or loyalty program numbers) in a unified data foundation. Because it’s fully integrated in the Salesforce Platform, this metadata can flow seamlessly into any Salesforce application based on set governance policies. This gives every team a 360-degree view of the customer to power trusted AI and drive automation and analytics across every touchpoint without compromising data security.

Salesforce believes in an open ecosystem and extensibility at every layer. For years, it has fostered an ISV and customer development ecosystem via the AppExchange. Now, this work is going even further with bring your own (BYO) AI models and zero copy. Indeed, today, customers and partners have ultimate flexibility — whether building a custom connector to ingest a particular data source through to feature extensibility and beyond.

“Data Cloud has been instrumental in helping us streamline operations across all of our [different] divisions to help inform strategic decision-making in one simple system, instead of switching between technology platforms,” said Tony Gondick, Senior Manager, IT Business Strategy, Kawasaki Motors Corp., U.S.A., Engines Division. “We see firsthand the value of Data Cloud in surfacing insights [from] our unstructured data. So much so that we became an Agentforce pilot customer to ensure our [team members] were powered with rich, contextual information to help solve problems faster, uncover more opportunities, and integrate more seamlessly with third-party systems to ensure we are more responsive to customer needs and can predict customer behavior.”

To further augment unstructured data integration and fuel next-generation enterprise knowledge for Agentforce, Salesforce recently acquired Zoomin, a leading data management provider whose technology now augments unstructured content capabilities in Data Cloud. Augmenting enterprise knowledge in Data Cloud can power new use cases for customers across multiple touchpoints and contextual enterprise knowledge by grounding agents in all enterprise unstructured data, such as Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, YouTube video, website, and content management system files. This integration accelerates how customers unlock unstructured data to maximize the potential of Agentforce and gives service teams a more contextually-aware understanding of their customers.

“In the testing environment, we drastically cut down the time needed to pull together information for service responses, for the ads side of our business,” said Amir Weingrod, Senior Manager, Business Systems, Unity Technologies. “The main challenge we faced was having to search across multiple sources and knowledge articles, then tailoring the response for each customer. With Zoomin and Salesforce, our knowledge is now centralized and will be directly available to Agentforce, bringing relevant, personalized answers right in front of the user. This integration has transformed our knowledge into a powerful productivity boost and a key driver of revenue.”

With Zoomin and Salesforce, our knowledge is now centralized and will be directly available to Agentforce, bringing relevant, personalized answers right in front of the user. This integration has transformed our knowledge into a powerful productivity boost and a key driver of revenue.

Amir Weingrod, Senior Manager, Business Systems, Unity Technologies

Trusted, contextual data for Agentforce

With industry-leading RAG and built-in capabilities like vector database, hybrid search, and no-code retrievers, Data Cloud ensures Agentforce has access to search and summarize valuable contextual insights. RAG retrieves the right data from the appropriate source, augments user prompts, and extracts value from the large language model (LLM). With RAG, users can search both structured and unstructured enterprise data ingested into Data Cloud. With hybrid search, organizations can find the most relevant information in the company’s knowledge base by combining the semantic capabilities of vector search with the exact match capabilities of keyword search, a critical capability for dealing with specific domain terms like product names or acronyms. 

Open Image Modal

Image Modal

Now generally available, Data Cloud’s no-code retrievers also empower admins and business users to implement customized RAG capabilities for both structured and unstructured data with a simple, click-based setup. Once data is ingested and indexed in Data Cloud, no-code retrievers bring the data directly into Prompt Templates and Flow automations, enabling Agentforce to access essential details from unstructured data sources like PDFs, knowledge articles, and call transcripts. This makes it easy for Agentforce to ground on specific use cases through filters — like articles within a specific category and firmware updates — without writing vector query code. Despite being no-code, users can still tailor the retrieval process by defining filters, ranking algorithms, and specifying the desired level of detail for the retrieved data. Data Cloud no-code retrievers provide a next-generation experience unlocking accessibility, faster development time, and improved data quality.

“Salesforce Data Cloud has seen tremendous growth and now powers Agentforce. Our new no-code retrievers and the integration of  Zoomin’s unstructured content capabilities represent a breakthrough for our customers,” said Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM of Salesforce Data Cloud. “By removing the technical barriers to building and deploying contextually-aware insights for Agentforce, we are enabling enterprises to harness the complete set of enterprise data with unprecedented ease. Now, teams can quickly create context-rich, intelligent Agentforce interactions that deliver real impact — all while significantly reducing the costs associated with data integration and retrieval.”

Now, teams can quickly create context-rich, intelligent Agentforce interactions that deliver real impact — all while significantly reducing the costs associated with data integration and retrieval.

Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM of Salesforce Data Cloud

Data Cloud transformation, indexing, search, and semantic capabilities are deeply integrated with the Atlas Reasoning Engine. Through the power of Data Cloud and the Atlas Reasoning Engine, agents can also decipher insights through nuanced questions married with complex unstructured data to return simple, successful, and relevant answers to customers. The Atlas Reasoning Engine can produce contextual richness that other DIY AI bots and copilots cannot because they do not have a complete view of customer data. For example, Agentforce can use part numbers found in customer-sent photos to pull up relevant knowledge articles for that product category and help support representatives resolve customer issues faster.

The ability to work with unstructured data is one of Data Cloud’s most significant differentiators, and it’s critical for equipping agents with the knowledge they need to deliver effective responses and outcomes. 

Autonomous actions in the flow of work

Delivering timely and personalized customer experiences means ensuring that business users, data teams, and technical users have easy access to actionable data. Data Cloud unifies customer profiles, enabling sales teams to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, service teams to proactively address customer needs, and marketing teams to personalize campaigns based on customer behavior and preferences. By democratizing data, Salesforce empowers every team to harness insights that drive smarter, more targeted customer interactions across the organization.

Data Cloud enables organizations to transform insights into autonomous actions. With integrated analytics and action layers, insights are no longer passive but serve as immediate calls to action, whether through automation, analytics or real-time suggestions to Agentforce. With our sub-second E2E real-time layer, enterprises can ingest, transform, index, perform hybrid search, RAG, and govern data in real time across Salesforce. This powers Einstein Personalization, now built on Data Cloud, along with real-time AI recommendations, analytics, and automations to enable faster decision-making and instant personalization across customer touchpoints.

Data Cloud enables automation through data-triggered workflows, advanced analytics, and AI-powered applications built on trusted data. With both low-code and pro-code tools, it empowers everyone in the organization to access and act on data, fostering self-service, informed decision-making, and innovation across teams. Agentforce uses machine learning (ML) and generative AI insights from Data Cloud to deliver personalized recommendations. From tailored in-store promotions to cross-channel offers, Agentforce delivers real-time engagement backed by sub-second data ingestion and harmonization, with instant notifications in Slack and insights available in Tableau.

Getting started with Data Cloud and Agentforce

Agents are most successful when they’re able to tap the power of data, AI, automation, and humans. Data Cloud, as the foundation of the Salesforce Platform and Agentforce, brings all of those elements together so businesses can build intelligent, responsive agents that address diverse needs‌ — ‌from streamlining customer support to empowering employee workflows‌ — ‌creating more personalized, efficient, and effective interactions. 

More information:

• To unlock the full potential of your data, explore how Salesforce Data Cloud can elevate AI and Agentforce capabilities to create customer and employee experiences that truly set you apart. 
• Join Salesforce at Agentforce World Tour to learn more

Implementing Agentforce is expected to help Unity save $800 in staff resource time for every request for information made via their website

Salesforce and Unity Environmental University today announced that the university is expanding its use of Salesforce to include Agentforce, a new layer on the Salesforce Platform that enables organizations to build and deploy autonomous AI agents. Unity, a private university specializing in environmental science-based education with climate-ready degrees including Sustainable Horticulture, Environmental Engineering, and Climate-Ready Business, will leverage Agentforce agents within the flow of work in Education Cloud to scale student recruitment, more effectively engage students during enrollment, and improve access to higher education.

The challenge: Unity has students in every U.S. state and territory and is creating an education model that opens doors to environmental science-focused learning worldwide. Having grown from 500 to 10,000 enrolled students since 2012, with the help of Education Cloud, Unity now aims to reach 50,000 enrolled students by 2030. However, the university’s staff is increasingly challenged to maintain their high level of service, especially in meeting enrollment goals. And time matters – prospective students cannot spend hours, weeks, or more waiting for information and navigating the admissions process. 

The solution: With Agentforce, Unity can scale staff resources to manage the increased volume of students. Agentforce goes beyond chatbots and copilots, using advanced reasoning abilities to make decisions and take action, like helping students through the application process.  Agentforce doesn’t depend on human engagement to get work done — these agents can be triggered by changes in data, business rules, pre-built automations, or signals via API calls from other systems. Unity’s AI agents will be grounded in the university’s unique data and metadata — such as previous student interactions, web engagement data, enrollment information, knowledge articles, and other institutional data — to personalize every interaction while keeping trust and privacy at the center of every engagement.

Go deeper: With Education Cloud as its primary CRM and student information system, Unity has a single platform that brings together all of its data — from inquiry, application, and registration information to academic programs and degree requirements — to provide staff with a full view of their students. Education Cloud also serves as Unity’s main student interface, helping manage all aspects of student success and academic advising, as well as the entire application process. 

Unity will initially deploy Agentforce to assist with the recruitment and enrollment process, focusing on resource-intensive tasks like the Request for Information (RFI) process, helping to answer prospective students’ questions about the university and its programs 24/7, as well as guiding them through the application process. Eventually, Agentforce will be used to enhance support throughout the entire student lifecycle. With Agentforce and Education Cloud, Unity can:

• Enhance Enrollment Conversion: Unity will use Agentforce to create a more efficient experience for students seeking information, applying, and enrolling. For example, prospective students will interact with student recruitment agents on the website, instantly receiving answers to their questions about the university, and in many cases, helping them start their application process in near real time. This will significantly reduce the time between an inquiry and a response, and ultimately help increase enrollment conversions.
• Expand Access for Learners: By making information and assistance more accessible through always-on Agentforce agents, Unity will help reduce barriers to entry for first-generation students, nontraditional learners, adult students, and distance learners.
• Scale Staff Resourcing: With Agentforce handling routine inquiries and tasks, staff will be able to focus their time on impactful, strategic initiatives such as personalized student support, outreach, and program development. But when human escalation is needed, hand-offs are seamless, with the full context of interactions instantly shared with a recruitment officer, or other support staff. 
• Simplify Enrollment and Registration: Looking ahead, Agentforce will be able to use all of the data centralized in Education Cloud to handle a broad spectrum of tasks, such as course registration, degree planning, advisory, and other essential student services. Agentforce will be able to respond dynamically to student questions around critical topics like financial aid and class registration to provide immediate, personalized assistance to Unity students at every stage of their journey, around the clock. For example, a student advisory agent will be able to assist with degree planning by recommending next-best course selections based on a student’s major and help them add or drop classes.

Salesforce perspective: “Recruitment has never been more important for universities than it is today, and every institution needs to be rethinking how they engage and support prospective students. AI agents help Unity augment the ability of staff to provide personalized and efficient student support and scale its workforce to meet the university’s new enrollment goals, all while lowering costs. By leveraging Agentforce and Education Cloud, Unity Environmental University will now be able to better support prospective students faster than ever before while increasing accessibility, improving student support, and bolstering enrollment.” ‌— Margo Martinez, VP & GM, Education 

By leveraging Agentforce and Education Cloud, Unity Environmental University will now be able to better support prospective students faster than ever before while increasing accessibility, improving student support, and bolstering enrollment.

Margo Martinez, VP & GM, Education

Unity perspective: “With Agentforce and Education Cloud, we will completely reimagine the recruitment and enrollment processes at Unity Environmental University. Instead of traditional paper forms or even chatbots, our students will soon have the convenience of interacting with an autonomous recruitment agent directly on our website, which will offer personalized support around the college application process.” – Dr. Melik Khoury, President & CEO, Unity Environmental University

More information:

• Get started with Agentforce
• Learn more about Education Cloud
• Uncover more customer success stories

SAN FRANCISCO AND AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – November 20, 2024 – Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world’s #1 AI CRM, today announced that luxury appliance manufacturer Fisher & Paykel will deploy Agentforce to scale its customer support team with autonomous agents — taking actions like answering frequently asked questions, scheduling service appointments, and more, freeing up human agents’ time for higher value tasks.

Agentforce, a new layer on the Salesforce Platform that enables companies to easily build and deploy AI agents that can autonomously take action across any business function, will help Fisher & Paykel deliver around-the-clock, high-quality support, giving customers experiences that are in keeping with its premium appliances. And, by handing off simpler and more routine tasks to agents, Fisher & Paykel’s human reps will have more time to spend ‌building customer relationships that increase sales.

“Our customers expect efficient and personalized experiences when they engage with our brand — experiences that mirror the luxury of our products,” said Rudi Khoury, Chief Digital Officer, Fisher & Paykel. “With Agentforce, we will enhance our partnership with Salesforce, deploying autonomous agents that will deliver for our customers when they need us most, while simultaneously driving sales.”

With Agentforce, we will enhance our partnership with Salesforce, deploying autonomous agents that will deliver for our customers when they need us most, while simultaneously driving sales.

Rudi Khoury, Chief Digital Officer, Fisher & Paykel

Fisher & Paykel, which strives to be the most human-centered appliance brand in the world, recognized the need to engage the right partner to create a step change in the quality of its customer service experience. Employees lacked visibility into customers’ interaction histories, leading to prolonged, less efficient service calls. To provide more precise appointment times, technicians required better visibility into the specifics of their onsite jobs.

Additionally, professional customers like retailers, builders, and designers sought more convenient ways to collaborate with the company, like the ability to check inventory and place orders online at any time, rather than waiting to call their representative during business hours.

With Agentforce, autonomous agents will be able to respond automatically to frequently asked questions, process orders, and schedule service appointments. Agents can also provide details to the technician leading any onsite jobs, giving them information on where the appointment is located and how old the appliance might be, freeing up human time for higher value tasks. 

For example, Agentforce will be able to take actions, like proactively notifying a customer that their freezer temperature is showing irregularities. The autonomous AI agent will diagnose the problem, alert the service team, and then help the customer schedule an appointment to resolve the issue. Next, the agent passes off the work order to a technician for the onsite job, while also providing job-specific details and knowledge articles and generating a post-work summary.

Expanding sales and service with agents, data, and CRM

With Salesforce, Fisher & Paykel has a single platform that brings together AI, data, and CRM to enable next-generation customer and employee experiences. In addition to Agentforce, Fisher and & Paykel is leveraging Salesforce to: 

• Unlock Trapped Data: Data Cloud can unlock trapped customer data, create a 360-degree view of every customer, and ground Agentforce agents with its CRM engagement and other data needed to deliver trusted, accurate output. Marketing Cloud uses the data to create hyper-personalized marketing segments. The company can also trigger automated journeys based on customers’ buying signals, such as visits to specific product pages on the website. 
• Increase Customer Engagement: With the ability to send more targeted communication, Fisher & Paykel is now sending more emails and achieving better results. For example, in 2023, it saw a 206% increase in unique opens and an 112% increase in unique clicks generated.
• Personalize Support: With Service Cloud, Fisher & Paykel can provide smarter, more custom support to customers all over the globe. Integrated with the brand’s call center technology, it provides operators with instant insight into the customer at the end of the phone‌ — ‌letting them continue the conversation where the last operator left off without the customer having to repeat themselves. With Service Cloud, the average service rep training time is reduced by 76%. Service agents can also book an on-site service technician, then and there on the phone, using Field Service. Appointment confirmations are sent automatically the evening prior and include a link where customers can track the arrival of their technician. 

“Consumers of any product expect customer service to be quick, effective, and personal. That is exactly what Agentforce will deliver for Fisher & Paykel,” said Adam Evans, EVP & GM of Salesforce AI Platform. “With Agentforce, Fisher & Paykel is unlocking new capabilities for sales and service while augmenting their employees, building deeper customer relationships, and driving unprecedented growth and profitability.”

Learn more:

• Read more about how Fisher & Paykel is using Salesforce
• Learn more about Agentforce and Data Cloud
• Learn more about Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud

About Fisher & Paykel

Luxury appliances, designed in Aotearoa New Zealand since 1934.

Fisher & Paykel is a global luxury appliance company founded in New Zealand with a unique culture of curiosity and world-first innovation. For 90 years, we have challenged conventional appliance design with a human insight, performance innovation and technology-led approach, resulting in iconic products that respond to the changing nature of the kitchen and reimagine the future of fabric care. 

Today, as we design for a changing world, we carry our legacy of innovation into the future with efficient, connected and refined appliance ecosystems. Built to last and engineered for life, they integrate seamlessly with modern homes and lifestyles, and accelerate our carbon-zero transition.

* Any unreleased services or features referenced in this post are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

Agent Builder enables users to build an agent to automate any business process in any industry using existing Salesforce Platform tools like workflows, Apex code, and prompt templates

Customers like The Adecco Group, BACA Systems, OpenTable, Saks, and Wiley are choosing Agentforce Service Agents to drive faster, more personalized responses to customers and build efficiencies across their business

SAN FRANCISCO – October 29, 2024 – Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world’s #1 AI CRM, today announced the general availability of Agentforce, a new layer on the Salesforce Platform that enables companies to build and deploy AI agents that can autonomously take action across any business function. Agentforce goes beyond chatbots and copilots, using advanced reasoning abilities to make decisions and take action, like resolving customer cases, qualifying sales leads, and optimizing marketing campaigns. Agentforce doesn’t depend on human engagement to get work done; these agents can be triggered by changes in data, business rules, pre-built automations, or signals via API calls from other systems. Companies like OpenTable, Saks, and Wiley are using Agentforce today to augment their employees, expand their workforce, and improve customer experiences.

In addition, Agentforce includes out-of-the-box agents that are easy to customize and deploy with low-code or no-code tools and that work around the clock across any channel. Agentforce Service Agent, the first generally available out-the-box agent, outperforms traditional chatbots by handling a wide range of tasks, from simple to complex, with pre-built topics and actions for customer support. Users can customize pre-built agents to serve any industry and any use case, like retail with order management topics, or financial services with billing and payment support topics. 

​​​​“Agentforce is redefining what’s possible in business and beyond, ushering in a new era of AI abundance and limitless workforces that augment every employee, build deeper customer relationships and drive unprecedented growth and profitability,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce. “Built on Salesforce’s trusted, fully customizable platform — seamlessly integrating enterprise data, metadata, AI models, workflows, security and applications — Agentforce is what AI was meant to be.”

Built on Salesforce’s trusted, fully customizable platform — seamlessly integrating enterprise data, metadata, AI models, workflows, security and applications — Agentforce is what AI was meant to be.

Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce

With Agentforce, there’s no need to DIY (do it yourself) your AI. Unlike other agent platforms that require complex data integration and custom automation builds, Agentforce is already built into the Salesforce Platform. Customers can instantly turn their existing Flows, prompt templates, Apex, and APIs into agent actions, seamlessly connecting to enterprise data, security models, and automations‌ — ‌with the added power of native tools like Data Cloud, Slack, and MuleSoft. The all-new Agent Builder enables Salesforce admins and developers to use natural language to create instructions and guardrails for their agents. 

At Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce customers brought Agentforce to life by building over 10,000 autonomous agents designed to tackle specific business challenges. They learned that “if you can describe it, Agentforce can do it.” With Agentforce, customers can create an on-demand digital workforce that operates without constraints, allowing them to quickly and easily build and deploy agents using the Salesforce tools and language they already know.

Why this Matters: 

New Salesforce research shows that U.S. consumers can spend up to nine hours interacting with customer service trying to resolve a single issue. On average, 67% of consumers are frustrated when customer service can’t resolve their issues instantly and choose to walk away from roughly one-third of customer service interactions. This presents a huge opportunity to improve the customer experience with agents. 

“Piloting Agentforce made a noticeable difference during one of our busiest periods — back-to-school season. It’s been exciting to go live with our first agent, and we’ve seen a more than 40% increase in case resolution, outperforming our old bot. Agentforce helps to manage routine responsibilities and free up our service teams for more complex cases.” – Kevin Quigley, Director, Process Improvement, Wiley

What’s New:

The following solutions are now generally available to all customers: 

• Agentforce Service Agent — Now available, Agentforce Service Agent is a customer-facing autonomous AI agent that helps customers deliver self-service with accurate, always-on support across any channel — like voice, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and websites. Agentforce Service Agent can be set up in minutes with pre-built topics and actions for key service use cases, such as case management, reservation management, order inquiries, account management, delivery issues, and general FAQs. Escalations and hand-offs to human reps are seamless, with the full context of interactions instantly shared in the support representative’s service console. For example, a rep wraps up their morning global support call, and before they can even grab a cup of coffee, a team of AI agents has automatically helped hundreds or even thousands of customers simultaneously, ranging from troubleshooting an issue with personalized advice to automatically scheduling field service appointments.
• Agent Builder — Also now available, Agent Builder makes the set-up and activation of an agent simple. Agent Builder enables users to customize out-of-the-box agents or build new agents for any role, any industry, or any use case. Using low code, or no code, Agent Builder brings in structured and unstructured data from Data Cloud and uses existing tools like Flows, Prompts, Apex, and MuleSoft APIs to configure an agent. Starting with the Agent Wizard, users are guided in the selection and setup of the agent. Next, users can create a job to be done for their agent by defining topics, writing natural language instructions within that topic, and creating a library of actions for it to choose from. Users can also easily observe an agent’s plan of action and test its responses in Agent Builder. 

Go deeper:

The Agentforce layer is deeply integrated into the Salesforce Platform, powered by data, AI, and Salesforce’s ecosystem of Customer 360 apps, all built on a trusted foundation. The Salesforce Platform expands the boundaries of agents, enabling infinite capacity, proactive actions across any role or channel, and context of every customer interaction with powerful capabilities, including: 

• Data Cloud — Data Cloud and the Zero Copy Partner Network allow organizations to harmonize all their enterprise data — both structured and unstructured — no matter where it resides. Data Cloud connects, unifies, and harmonizes customer data and metadata, giving agents access to the exact information they need to deliver precise, contextual responses. Data Cloud makes structured and unstructured data – including emails, transcripts, and PDFs – easily digestible by large language models (LLMs). Now, with new Data Cloud retrieval augmented generation (RAG) functionality, users can also upload files and URLs as data sources for their agent. Data Cloud provides the vital customer data that grounds Agentforce, making agents more contextually aware, knowledgeable, and adaptable to customer needs. For example, when a frustrated customer contacts Agentforce, Data Cloud’s built-in RAG capabilities add real-time insights and context from past emails, support tickets, product photos, voicemails, and other sources as defined by governance policies to help the agent better understand the customer’s perspective. Data Cloud’s hybrid search then identifies the right knowledge article based on customer context to help agents resolve the issue accurately. As customer requests evolve, Data Cloud enables the agent to determine the next-best steps, like automating follow-up emails. 
• Atlas Reasoning Engine — The Atlas Reasoning Engine, the brain inside Agentforce, autonomously analyzes data, makes decisions, and completes tasks, providing reliable and accurate results. This is what allows Agentforce to act, not just assist. Agentforce doesn’t depend on human prompts or struggle with complex, multistep tasks like now-outdated chatbots and copilots. Atlas is built on a proprietary system designed to simulate how humans think and plan. It starts by evaluating user queries and refining them for clarity and relevance. Then, it retrieves the most relevant data and builds a plan for execution. The process then refines the plan further, ensuring it’s accurate, relevant, and grounded in trusted data. Created by the Salesforce AI Research team, the Atlas Project initially involved a select set of customers but grew considerably after research showed the results Agentforce could deliver were twice as relevant and 33% more accurate than other available solutions. Salesforce AI Research continues to push what’s possible in the agentic AI space, incubating with strategic customers and bringing innovation to the edge of the roadmap.
• Trust & Security Built-in — The Einstein Trust Layer protects customer data through robust security features and guardrails like zero data retention, toxicity detection, secure data retrieval, and dynamic grounding — improving the safety and accuracy of outputs while ensuring the responsible use of AI agents across the Salesforce ecosystem. For example, the Audit Trail feature empowers customers with the necessary data to track AI agent actions and outputs, ensuring AI usage complies with their organization’s security, privacy, regulatory, and AI governance policies. Additionally, Salesforce has released a new set of principles and ethical controls, known as trust patterns, to enhance the reliability of the AI agents and ensure a seamless partnership between humans and AI. These patterns include hallucination reduction with topic classification, opt-out functionality, and design decisions to ensure proper human oversight. 
• Customer 360 — Agentforce is deeply integrated with Salesforce Customer 360, leveraging the full power of applications like sales, service, marketing, and commerce. It provides a complete view of the customer, enabling seamless hand-offs to human agents with the full conversation history.
• MuleSoft capabilities — MuleSoft is an industry-leading integration, automation, and API management platform, managing 205 billion integration flow monthly executions and 331 billion automation flow monthly executions. MuleSoft can extend Agentforce capabilities by enabling Salesforce developers and admins to leverage their APIs and bring in third-party data.  
• Salesforce Flow capabilities — Customers have been building workflow automations in Flow Builder since 2019, with an estimated 4 trillion flows built annually and 5.6 billion hours saved, according to Salesforce research. Agentforce can take action by invoking any existing process flow created in Flow Builder, such as elevating a priority of a customer case ticket.
• Slack — Slack empowers every employee with agentic skills in the flow of work, making it the best place to deploy Agentforce for employee-facing use cases. Users can build and customize employee agents, tap into better context with more relevance, and work side-by-side with agents right where work is already happening in Slack.

Agentforce Industry Examples: 

The flexibility of the Agentforce platform is critical to tailoring each agent to serve a specific use case or industry. Customers can expect agents in the following sectors:

• Communications — A billing resolution agent provides faster customer support around billing inquiries and resolves issues faster to boost team productivity and improve customer experiences. For example, if a customer ‌submits a complaint or question about a specific charge on their account, the agent can analyze past monthly bills, identify the issue, and validate dispute requests to arrive at a solution  based on business rules.
• Education — A recruitment services agent provides immediate, personalized assistance to prospective students, 24/7. Instead of receiving repetitive or reactive responses from a chatbot or having to wait for support from staff, prospective students will get the tailored information they need in real time. The agent will be able to engage in a dynamic conversation and answer multiple questions on financial aid, specific majors, and other topics while providing helpful recommendations for students.  
• Banking — A banking service agent provides faster responses to customer service inquiries and automates complex manual tasks like facilitating transaction disputes. For example, the agent can autonomously retrieve recent transactions from an account, coordinate with customers to identify unauthorized charges, notify merchants of disputed charges, and issue provisional credits to customers — all before a human agent needs to intervene.
• Insurance — An insurance service agent helps insurance brokerages automate time-intensive processes, such as plan year renewals, and identify potential retention risks. For example, the agent can proactively analyze client data, detect gaps in client coverage, and create action plans with recommendations for potential plan adjustments or additional coverage options to fill the gaps.
• Healthcare — A patient services agent answers inquiries and helps schedule the best physician for a given patient based on their needs. For example, the agent will be able to review coverage benefits, generate medical history summaries, and approve care requests.
• Life Sciences — A medical sales agent proactively manages inventory and generates contracts with hospital systems. For example, the agent will be able to curate promotional content based on clinical studies and an HCP’s specialty. 
• Manufacturing — A proactive maintenance agent monitors the vast amount of data being generated by connected assets — including machinery, industrial equipment and vehicles, appliances, and devices — in real time. For example, the agent will be able to identify declining performance or potential failures, proactively alert customers to the issue, and help them set up a service appointment. It will also be able to provide detailed summaries so customer service representatives and technicians can quickly understand case history to better serve customers.
• Public Sector — ‌A DMV help agent helps answer questions about registration, licenses, and appointments. For example, the agent will be able to help provide guidance to someone selling their vehicle to ensure everything is properly reported to the state.
• Media — ​​An advertising proposal agent helps advertising sales teams respond faster to campaign briefs and requests for proposals (RFPs). For example, the agent will be able to suggest the right combination of ad products, target audience, and placement details that fit the campaign’s needs and KPIs, and help kickstart a comprehensive media plan on behalf of an ad sales team.
• Retail — ​​A personal shopper agent acts as a digital concierge for online shoppers, using generative AI to provide personalized assistance on ecommerce sites, chat, or messaging apps like WhatsApp. Unlike basic chatbots that are limited to answering predefined questions, it taps into a retailer’s catalog and product data, learning from shoppers’ behavior and preferences. This allows shoppers to use natural language search, get conversational responses, and quickly add items to their cart for instant checkout. 

Customer & Analyst Quotes 

“Since introducing Agentforce at Saks, we are beginning to see the real potential for its autonomous AI agents to augment our teams’ ability to provide personalized and efficient customer support. Agentforce will streamline routine tasks, such as order tracking, enabling our service teams to prioritize more meaningful customer interactions and focus on delivering a high-touch, tailored customer experience. We’re excited to continue enhancing our luxury shopping experience and exploring new ways Agentforce can continue to further elevate our service.” – Mike Hite, Chief Technology Officer, Saks Global 

“Every year, OpenTable helps 60,000 restaurants fill 1.7 billion seats. With Agentforce, we are able to automate routine tasks like reservation changes and loyalty point redemptions, freeing up our support team to focus on more complex customer inquiries. Saving just two minutes on a 10-minute call lets our service reps focus on strengthening customer relationships. The seamless integration with Service Cloud gives us a unified view of each diner’s preferences and history, allowing us to deliver personalized, high-quality service. It’s not just about solving problems faster — it’s about creating better, more meaningful interactions with our diners and restaurants. With Agentforce, we can meet growing global demand while maintaining the exceptional service our customers expect.” – George Pokorny, Senior VP of Global Customer Success, OpenTable

“After great early success with Salesforce, we are focused on the next era of AI to transform the future of staffing, consulting, and business services across the 100,000 clients we support on any given day. By harnessing Data Cloud, MuleSoft, and Salesforce’s AI capabilities, including Agentforce, we’re unlocking the full power of our data to accelerate decision-making, boost efficiency, and reimagine how we serve clients.” – Caroline Basyn, Chief Digital & IT Officer, The Adecco Group 

“Agentforce will help ezCater transform the way workplaces order and manage food. With Agentforce, we will be able to effectively streamline everything from last-minute order changes to managing dietary preferences through AI-powered agents. Agentforce will also ensure we can seamlessly transition to human assistance if a more complex issue arises. This blend of AI and human interaction ensures that our customers always have the best experience, no matter what their needs may be.” – Erin DeCesare, CTO, ezCater

“Agentforce isn’t just another AI platform that requires months of customization. At BACA Systems, we saw how it enabled us to launch powerful generative AI experiences in days — no AI engineers needed. For customers with larger admin teams, the impact could be even greater. Unlike other platforms, Agentforce prioritizes data privacy, building on the trust we expect from Salesforce, and these virtual coworkers become invaluable assets. We started our journey with employee-facing use cases where our team members were saving multiple hours a week, and now, with Agentforce, we see even more opportunity to drive efficiencies and better serve our customers.” – Andrew Russo, Salesforce Architect, BACA Systems

“We can’t wait to start utilizing Agentforce to completely reimagine the recruitment and enrollment processes at Unity Environmental University. Instead of traditional forms or even chatbots, our students will soon have the convenience of interacting with an autonomous recruitment agent directly on our website, which will offer personalized support around the college application process.” – Dr. Melik Khoury, President & CEO, Unity Environmental University

“For first-generation college students, the 1:385 coach-to-student ratio makes receiving individualized guidance difficult. By integrating Agentforce into our platform, we are implementing cutting-edge solutions to better support students. Agents empower our coaches to focus on high-touch, personalized experiences — real connection and guidance — while Agentforce manages vital tasks like sharing deadlines and answering common questions at any time day or night.” – Siva Kumari, CEO, College Possible

“Agentforce provides organizations the unique opportunity to transition from incremental gains to exponential ROI with agents by automating customer interactions, improving outcomes, and reducing costs. By integrating data, flows, and user interfaces, it mitigates risk and accelerates time to value. The agentic platform approach enables businesses to harness the full potential of AI, transforming how they engage with customers and setting the stage for exponential growth.” – Rebecca Wettemann, CEO and principal analyst at industry analyst firm Valoir

“Autonomous agents powered by Salesforce’s Agentforce are transforming the customer experience by delivering fast, accurate, and personalized support around the clock. By harnessing advanced AI to make decisions and take action autonomously, businesses can resolve customer issues more quickly and at scale, leading to more meaningful interactions and enhanced customer satisfaction. This innovation empowers companies to redirect their human workforce toward more complex tasks, ultimately driving individual productivity and business growth that scales. Agentforce sets a new standard for consistent, seamless sales, service, marketing, and commerce interactions across multiple channels, reinforcing its role as a leader in customer experience.” – Michael Fauscette, CEO and Chief Analyst, Arion Research LLC

Additional Agentforce Resources:

• Try Agentforce for Free with Foundations — Customers can now try Agentforce for free with Salesforce Foundations, a $0 add-on for Enterprise Edition and higher. Announced last month, Foundations helps businesses prepare to get ready for AI by extending their CRM capabilities with additional key features from sales, service, marketing, commerce, and Data Cloud. Foundations now includes credits to power the first 1,000 conversations with Agentforce Service Agent, allowing companies to try its capabilities before buying.
• Agentblazer Community — The new Agentblazer Community makes it easy for professionals in any line of business or industry to learn about AI agents, get hands-on with Agentforce technology, connect with Salesforce product experts and community members, grow their careers, and shape the future of their organizations. 
• Salesforce Accelerator — Agents for Impact — Agents for Impact is a new accelerator designed to help nonprofits harness Agentforce. Agents for Impact will provide technology, funding, and expertise to help nonprofits build and customize AI agents, enabling them to improve operational efficiency and scale community impact in the AI-driven future. 
• Access to experts on demand: Salesforce Professional Services is a team of over 10,000 Salesforce consultants and architects built to help customers strategize, implement, and innovate on Salesforce; more than 95% of Salesforce Professional Services customers have reported innovating faster on Salesforce. Agentforce Activator, now available through both Salesforce Professional Services and certified partners, connects customers with Agentforce experts who can quickly build and deploy agents tailored with actions, data, and guardrails aligned with business goals and values.
• Get more done, faster: The Agentforce Partner Network empowers enterprises to customize out-of-the-box AI agents, build new ones, or deploy partner-built agents for specific industries and functions ‌via Salesforce AppExchange. Leading Global Systems Integrators (GSIs) like Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, PwC, and Slalom are available to help accelerate adoption; customers on average report a 31% faster rollout of emerging tech after working with a consulting partner.* Systems Integrators (SIs) are also using their domain expertise to help customers define, deploy, and build AI agents. For example, NeuraFlash, a leading Salesforce implementation partner, collaborated with a large smart home security and automation provider to meet customers where they are by streamlining troubleshooting, accelerating response times, and significantly reducing the need for human intervention in support cases. 

How Customers Get Agentforce

Agentforce Service Agent and Agent Builder are now generally available. Agentforce Service Agent pricing starts at $2 per conversation; standard volume discounts apply.

Get Started

• Realize the value of Agentforce sooner by working with the experts from Salesforce Professional Services and certified partners through Agentforce Activator.
• Build Your First Agent with the #BuiltWithAgentforce Quest. The first 1,000 Trailblazers to complete the Quest are eligible to receive an exclusive Agentforce T-shirt.

Resources

• Explore Agentforce
• Join the Agentblazer Community
• Learn more about Service Agents
• Estimate your ROI with Agentforce
• Learn more about Agentforce pricing
• Explore Agentforce use cases
• Learn how Agentforce works
• Read more about how AI is transforming our lives
• Get more insights on AI agent trends
• Read how Agentforce is inventing the future of agents
• Explore Salesforce’s trust and ethical use principles

*Source: 2023 Salesforce Partner Value / AppExchange Customer Success Survey. 2023 survey based on n=1,000 customers across AMER, EMEA, LATAM and APAC.

The new marketing features in Starter Suite and Pro Suite that enable growing customers to create personalized email marketing campaigns from within their Salesforce CRM. Marketing Cloud Growth, a new edition of Marketing Cloud helps growing businesses connect marketing automation with sales, service, and commerce. 

All of these innovations are built on the Salesforce Platform and Data Cloud, which unlocks and unifies a company’s data, giving every marketer a 360-degree view of the customer to drive automation and analytics, personalize engagement, and power trusted AI agents.

Why it’s Relevant: 73% of customers expect better personalization as technology advances, yet fewer than six in 10 marketers can fully personalize familiar channels such as email (54%) and mobile messaging (57%). AI is here to help, but most businesses struggle to build the trusted data foundation they need to deliver to create consistent, personalized experiences across customer journeys, and only 31% of marketers overall are fully satisfied with their ability to unify customer data sources.

Zoom in: These new marketing solutions are built on the Salesforce Platform and are grounded in unified customer data and metadata through Data Cloud. This enables growth customers to unlock their trapped customer data and deliver more personalized interactions with autonomous AI agents across sales, service, commerce, and marketing functions. 

Starter Suite and Pro Suite are all-in-one CRM apps designed to help growing businesses manage marketing, sales, service departments from a single, unified interface. The Starter and Pro email marketing features announced today enable customers to:

• Get started quickly with pre-built campaign templates that help them easily launch email journeys to nurture prospective and existing customer relationships. Built-in analytics also provide the data business leaders need to test, learn, and optimize their marketing content to improve marketing ROI.
• Personalize communications and drive better marketing results using smart segmentation powered by unified customer data across marketing, sales, service, and commerce departments.
• Target the right audiences at the right time using Einstein Send Time Optimization,  which automatically chooses the best time to send each message, helping to nurture new relationships and strengthen customer loyalty.

Marketing Cloud Growth Edition enables marketers to tap into the power of Data Cloud and generative AI directly within their flow of work, connecting multi-channel marketing with sales, service, and commerce on one platform. Following an easy, step-by-step process, marketers can quickly start using data and AI agents to:

• Deliver campaigns and content in minutes with Agentforce Campaigns by automatically creating a campaign brief, email content, and customer journey using no-code, natural language prompts. Marketers can also use generative AI to create segments and SMS messages.
• Engage customers with multi-channel journeys through email and native SMS. SMS empowers marketers to reach customers with just-in-time reminders and other messages, driving attendance and engagement.
• Personalize customer relationships with advanced personalization features like Cross-object Merge Fields and Rule-based Dynamic Content that help marketers display content relevant to their customers based on all their customer data

Salesforce Perspective: “Salesforce is committed to supporting all of its growing customers explore the many different ways that generative AI can help improve their operational efficiency, profitability, and growth. Starter and Pro Suite’s new marketing tools, together with Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, will help growing businesses use data, AI, and automation to deliver more relevant and consistent personalized experiences across every step of the customer journey.” -Giovanni Crispino, SVP and Head of EMEA ESMB, Salesforce

The customer perspective: “Data Cloud helped us unify data from over 50 million of our customers in Brazil to support them whether buying or paying bills on our platform. With trusted data from Data Cloud fueling Marketing Cloud our conversions rose 30%; and with Service Cloud, we were able to reduce customer service requests time from 9 to 6 minutes.” -Jonathas Mendes, Chief Data Officer, Dotz

“By connecting all of our data together on a single platform, Salesforce gives us the trusted data foundation we need to use Agentforce and automation to deliver personalized experiences for our guests at every turn. By using Data Cloud to power AI agents, our professionals will be able to better serve our customers and deliver the right guest experience at the time when the guest needs it.” -Martin Kemmer, CEO, Place Value Hotels Management GMBH

Availability

• The new marketing features are available to all Starter Suite and Pro Suite customers in Latin America and Europe now.
• Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is available in Latin America and Europe now.
• Because Starter Suite, Pro Suite, and Marketing Cloud Growth Edition are all built on the Salesforce Platform, customers can easily upgrade to the next level of solutions as their businesses grow. 

More Information:

• Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Starter Suite or Pro Suite
• Learn how Marketing Cloud Growth can help your business grow
• Explore how marketers can work with Agents to drive customer success together