In August 2024, with about 10,000+ people present at Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce launched Agentforce, the ‘AI chatbot agent’, to improve their customer experience. It’s easy to use and doesn’t require any complex setup.
Salesforce’s Agentforce costs around $2 per conversation. This isn’t much when you consider how well it works autonomously, taking care of repetitive and redundant tasks making it essential for your business in 2025.
What is Agentforce?
Agentforce is the ultimate AI tool, the successor to Einstein Chatbot, that Salesforce has built for all its users. Well, we know it won’t be the last one, but for sure it came at the right time, it’s truly a significant step forward.
The tool runs on Atlas’s reasoning engine, which imitates the human decision-making process.
Like humans, the engine weighs pros and cons and then calculates which one is the better option. That’s what Agentforce does for you. It has a brain of its own, that works like a human agent and thus requires no human intervention.
Training Agentforce agents is not as tough as training a new resource. You get prebuilt bots for specific tasks, that you can customize by defining rules that tell it what to do and what to stay away from. More on this below.
Salesforce CRM Investment Benefits
Salesforce is a leading CRM platform which offers a robust suite of features. That’s why it’s on the priority list for many organizations that are looking to invest in a CRM. . They’re fully aware of how implementing Salesforce can lead to an enhanced customer experience.
That is what CRM is meant to be, a customer relationship management software that helps you manage customer interactions, personalize them, and keep them engaged. So that you can be on top of the customer’s mind, and lose no chance of upselling, cross-selling, or at the very least, delighting your customers.
How does it do that? Its capabilities include strong, in-depth analysis of every aspect of your business and its customer interaction points. When paired with Salesforce’s powerful AI, it can take that data and make meaningful suggestions that can help enhance data-driven decision making.
The list of features doesn’t end here. Salesforce offers sales, marketing, commerce, and additional services. That’s about as good as it gets and with Agentforce, they’re going a step further. Agentforce doesn’t just rely on Salesforce data but on any system that’s integrated with the platform
Salesforce Agentforce Pricing
Agentforce is not a free feature but it is freemium. Salesforce Agentforce Pricing starts at $2 per conversation whereas in the Salesforce foundation, you get up to 1k Agentforce conversations and leads free.
For this cost you get the following benefits:
- Autonomous operations without human supervision
- Atlas reasoning agent for optimal decision-making
- Real-time data retrieval from the database, no information limitations
- Low code customization tools, easily set guardrails and get the job done
- Seamless human-AI collaboration
Agentforce pros and cons
Every tool has its pros and cons, and Agentforce is no different. At the end of the day, it’s an AI bot. Of course, it’s not the perfect solution, but what businesses drive from it makes it “the perfect” tool for them.
Agentforce pros:
- Data-driven insights
- Seamless integration
- Improved customer experience
- Autonomous task management
- Cost-effectiveness
- Customer satisfaction
Agentforce Cons:
- Salesforce Agentforce cost, $2 per conversation is a bit pricey considering the ROI you’ll get.
- Need to set it up properly to make it work.
- To get the job done well, you need to ensure that it gets the right instructions, and right guardrails to avoid getting off-track.
Agentforce ROI
ROI is the return on investment and is a financial formula that enterprises can use to calculate returns in terms of dollar value. That being said, it’snot always measured quantitatively. It can also be measured by a rise in productivity or efficiency of the organization.
In the case of Agentforce, both quantitative and qualitative measures can be used to evaluate it. The result is reflected in the form of profits or values gained.
Here’s how it works in various across various business functions/ departments and gives ROI in your CRM investment benefits:
Sales
With Agentforce, sales representatives can create follow-up messages and even automate it. This means you don’t need a team that is available 24/7; instead, you can utilize an agent that operates autonomously and efficiently. The AI agent can manage scheduling follow-ups and offer real-time engagement to help nurture relationships.
Marketing
By using Agentforce, marketing teams can personalize every message and campaign by analyzing customer data, customer segmentation, and personalizing marketing campaigns to maximize impact.
Customer service
Agentforce operates autonomously in customer service, efficiently managing any customer inquiry. By consulting guides, and documents, AI agents can guide customers step by step through their issues, reducing resolution times and enhancing customer satisfaction. If the AI agent encounters a situation it can’t handle it will loop a human agent for assistance.
E-commerce
With Agentforce you can personalize your customer buying journey. On the website, it can track orders, update statuses, and make product recommendations.
Health
With fewer doctors for patients, healthcare facilities are always overwhelmed. Agentforce helps providers serve patients better by engaging their queries through multiple channels and notifying them if a slot opens up.
Finance
Salesforce has strong analytical capabilities, pair that with Agentforce’s AI, and you can create meaningful reports with the metrics that truly matter. It can further highlight where you can control cost, look into lost opportunities, and increase revenue and profits.
Types of Prebuilt Agenforce Agents
To get you started Salesforce offers various prebuilt agents, these include the following.
Service Agent
Answer common customer questions, like how to do the initial setup, or resolve common issues. The service agent will be able to view customer case records and via informational articles, serve the customers without delay.
Sales Development Representative Agent
When working globally, language can be a constraint, and having employees fluent in all languages is impossible. Agents are not just limited to nurturing inbound leads, answering product questions, handling objections, and scheduling appointments, they can engage leads in any language through any preferred channel. So you don’t miss out on any opportunity that comes your way.
Sales Coach
Training teams does take a lot of time for sales managers. You can’t ignore the training, but at the same time, you can’t dedicate all your time to it either. With a sales coach, the AI agent can role-play, act as a customer, and help trainees practice or polish their pitching and negotiating skills.
Personal Shopper Agent
This is a cool feature that can be added to your website. Whenever a customer comes to your site you can show a popup for them to shop with a personal shopper. It’ll ask them what they’re shopping for and then make product recommendations, helping boost conversion rates. From the chat, customers can even add the item to their shopping cart and seamlessly checkout with various Salesforce payment gateways.
Campaign Assistant
The agent can build and launch campaigns faster. It can analyze audience segments, and generate briefs, content, and customer journeys. The agent is proficient in personalizing engagements using real-time data, and analyzing performance, making improvements to optimize KPIs to drive results.
Why is Agentforce a Business Essential?
After reading through the points we’ve made, one thing becomes abundantly clear. Agentforce boosts ROI and gives the return at a higher dollar value. Investing in Salesforce is essential for businesses aiming to make the most of every opportunity.
Below are some Agentforce stats to put things in perspective.
Cost Efficient
83% of sales teams and 76% of e-commerce teams with AI saw revenue growth. 92% of service teams with AI say it reduces their costs.
Saves Time
Salespeople spend 71% of their time on non-selling tasks, and service reps spend 66% of their time on non-customer-facing tasks. With Agentforce you cut back on these time-consuming tasks and your human agents get time to strategize.
A Resourceful Tool
Agentforce is not just to serve your customers but also your teams. They can easily chat with Agentforce, and ask for real-time information on certain terms during client calls. They further get the required information from company documents.
How to Create an Agentforce Agent?
To create an Agentforce agent, the first requirement is a Salesforce account. You get various prebuilt agent templates that come with predefined jobs, as well as necessary instructions and guidelines. Additionally, you have the option to build and launch custom agents for specific jobs.
There are two ways to proceed:
- Pick from premade agent templates
Or
- Explain your job in plain language to the agent.
- It’ll generate steps from already set common jobs.
- Launch your agent and see it do the work.
How does the Atlas Reasoning Engine work behind Agentforce?
If you’re into technicalities and want to understand how the engine works, here is the behind-the-scenes:
- Query evaluation: It analyzes queries and adds clarity to them to make AI agents understand the tasks
- Data retrieval: Next, it gathers information from various sources to work with.
- Plan generation: It then runs the query along with the real-time data for the AI to generate a plan.
- Plan refinement: Finally, it uses this plan to continually improve to gain the best result.
After going through all this, it assigns the task to the Agentforce agent whose job is predefined. It follows the guardrails and gets the job done.
All autonomously, from start to finish, without human intervention. This is the power of Agentforce AI for you!
Use cases:
- In healthcare, it can provide patients and providers with a complete medical history and recommend next steps
- A banking agent can manage client queries, and assist in providing the best-personalized banking services, given their transaction history, spending, and investing habits to recommend packages and then strategize for maximum financial gains.
- Retail agents can manage outreach and provide real-time campaign insights, that resolve customer cases
Builders in Agentforce:
Agent Builder
It lets users create, modify, and deploy agents quickly. Simply define jobs, create action libraries, and test responses.
Model Builder
It is for registration, testing, and activation of custom AI models and large language models(LLM) which are then activated for prompt builder.
Prompt Builder
You can set custom prompt templates, with their CRM, and data cloud to enhance the output of the generated results.
Future of Agentforce for Businesses
Agentforce isn’t merely a tool, it’s a strategic weapon in the arsenal of modern businesses. By seamlessly integrating humans, data, AI, and action, Agentforce empowers organizations to revolutionize their operations. It’s not just a powerful tool; it’s a catalyst for transformative change.
As AI continues to evolve, Agentforce is poised to become an indispensable asset for businesses across industries. Its ability to automate routine tasks, enhance decision-making, and deliver personalized customer experiences will drive growth and efficiency. This can lead to significant CRM investment benefits such as increased ROI and reduced operational costs.
Conclusion
Salesforce Agentforce presents a compelling solution for large enterprises seeking to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive growth. Its robust AI capabilities, real-time data sharing with Salesforce CRM, and potential for automation across various business functions make it a valuable asset.
To fully realize Agentforce’s potential, businesses should consider partnering with experienced implementation partners like Rolustech Salesforce services. Our expertise in Salesforce and AI can ensure a successful deployment and ongoing optimization of Agentforce, maximizing its benefits and minimizing risks.
Additional Resources
- If you are planning to migrate to Salesforce, here’s your guide.
