Salesforce Agentforce: Introducing the Third Wave of AI Revolution

Dreamforce 2024 has already created a buzz with the launch of several innovations, highlighting one thing: Salesforce is bringing the third wave of AI revolutions and changing the business industry for good. 

AI agents are one of the announcements gaining high-intensity traction alongside Agentforce. In the keynote of the Dreamforce 2024 opening event, Marc Benioff already flagged that Agentforce is going to be the deal-breaker of the AI-powered century. Agentforce will empower businesses to build and manage their personal autonomous agents for regular tasks across teams. This time, it’s not only for sales or customer support; “Agentforce In Every App” is what Salesforce focused on this year. 

Let’s get into the in-depth units of what AI agents are and how Agentforce is set to break all the records in AI innovation dynamics.

What is Agentforce?: The Hero Who Brought Third Wave In AI Revolution

One of the most significant innovations, Agentforce, is an autonomous and hyper-active application created to simplify the lives of both employees and customers. This application-based agent provides users with the required information to deliver their respective tasks. 

Here are 5 required attributes to build one with Agentforce:

• Role: what job and task is this agent being created for? 
• Data: what sort of data they are allowed to access (structured and unstructured data). 
• Actions: How capable are these agents? Their role must go beyond answering customer’s queries. They must be able to execute logical tasks like running Apex code, flows, MuleSoft API calls, etc., in your org.
• Guardrails: Code of conduct for agents. For this, the Einstein Trust Layer is leveraged to secure data privacy through data masking, prompt injection defense, zero retention prompts, following ethical guardrails, and monitoring AI activities. 
• Channel: where they are supposed to work. It outlines the channels through which agents can interact with customers and employees. 

This is what Agentforce is truly capable of doing and what it is made of: 

Technology Behind Agentforce: Customize Your Agent

Here are all the ingredient technologies on which Agentforces’ foundations are laid: 

1. Agent Builder

The low-key builder allows you to customize unique agents or even build your agents for any role, use case, or industry quickly. Organizations can create a job to be performed explicitly by agents by setting a topic, writing NLP-based instructions on that topic, and building a library of actions for agents to select from whenever needed. 

Users can also easily track the plan of actions to be executed by an agent and test their responses in Agent Builder.   

2. Atlas Reasoning Engine

Known as the brain behind Agentforce Agents, it helps users to make agents revert naturally and adapt to scenarios as quickly as possible. This makes them ready to function faster, multi-task, and become more relevant to the team.

Atlas Reasoning Engine boosts agents’ accuracy and understanding of the assigned topics and classifies customers’ requests into a category with set scopes and rules, giving direction to agents on which actions they can take and which they can’t. 

To help users effectively, each topic comes with clear instructions and actions. These might include checking order details or gathering additional information. The reasoning engine is designed to enhance this process by using advanced methods like retrieval augmentation generation (RAG). This technique employs various language models to improve the quality of queries, ensuring that the most relevant information is retrieved while also assessing how good the responses are. Additionally, agents now have access to searchable public data, which further supports their ability to assist users.

3. Trust & Guardrails

Agentforce allows teams to create a clear set of rules or guidelines for their AI agents through simple and natural language. This helps in defining the topics an agent should handle and sharing precise instructions on when to escalate a query to a human agent. By establishing these guardrails, teams ensure that the agents operate effectively in their respective assigned roles. 

Suppose a customer inquiry exceeds the AI agent’s capabilities. In that case, it can be easily handed off to a human representative, summarizing the conversation and providing essential details to make the conversation smooth.

Additionally, Agentforce prioritizes data security through the Einstein Trust Layer, which ensures that no Salesforce data is accessed or retained by third-party AI model providers, allowing organizations to use large language models (LLMs) safely. With these robust security measures in place, users can confidently deploy AI agents that can autonomously manage a variety of tasks simultaneously having the conscience to escalate more complex issues to human experts when necessary.

4. Model Builder 

Model Builder is a user-friendly, low-code tool that gives customers an easy way to register, test, and activate their custom AI models and large language models (LLMs) inside their Salesforce Org. Users can get the API keys for their preferred LLMs, experiment in their testing environment, and activate these models when it feels like using Prompt Builder, enabling businesses to customize their AI solutions and integrate them seamlessly into their Salesforce experience.

5. Prompt Builder

The prompt is the first step toward the creation of a generative experience. An excellent prompt builder makes it easy for users to personalize ready-to-use prompt templates with their own CRM or data available in Salesforce Data Cloud, improving the quality of results. 

The Prompt Builder integrates the generative experience into everyday tasks, whether it’s part of an automated workflow, a Lightning record page, or even in the actions performed by an agent. This way, users can enhance their work processes while receiving more relevant and tailored outputs.

Agentforce Is The Only One To Bring Human + AI + Data + AI + Actions

Here is what happens when Agentforce takes charge of the following: 

Human + AI 

The most effective way to utilize AI agents is by having them work peacefully with humans and witness your customer experience reaching heights. These assistive agents handle time-consuming tasks, freeing up employees to focus on higher-value activities that contribute more to the revenue generation side. 

Additionally, autonomous agents also proactively manage specific tasks and escalate issues to human team members when necessary. For example, every new Account Executive (AE) can get trained by a personal sales coach who provides feedback, guidance, and support to help them excel in their roles.

Data

For AI agents to perform effectively, they need access to the correct data from trusted sources at the right time. With Salesforce Data Cloud, the team can create intelligent agents that have the necessary information for any employee or customer interaction. 

Agentforce enables users to leverage data from all parts of their organization, ensuring scalability and security while keeping up with enterprise-grade standards. This setup allows agents to be dynamic in the case of business processes and customers without putting data security in jeopardy.

Actions

An AI agent that cannot take meaningful action is just another bot. Agentforce agents are designed to perform actions across various systems, empowering teams to deliver tasks more efficiently. These agents establish a connection between data and action by revealing metadata about defined workflows and AI automation, which empowers them to undertake high-value tasks.

Agentforce Pricing and General Availability

Agentforce pricing starts at $2 per conversation, along with applied standard volume discounts.

About the Agentforce General Availability, for Sales and Service, businesses can access it from October 25, 2024. 

A few components of Atlas Reasoning Engine will be available in February 2025. 

The Final Take

This Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce is so driven to launch exciting innovations and the Agentforce platform is sure to be one of them. This tool is going to be a boon to Salesforce customers and help them understand what customers need and respond even before they ask for help.

Agentforce isn’t just another AI-based offering; it is expected to be a ground-breaking combination of AI with the personal touch that customers like. Whether you want to grow your service team or make your current work easier, Agentforce is the tool you need by your side. 

If keeping your customers happy through excellent service and support is your priority, now is a great time to check out what Agentforce can do for you.