Salesforce News & Insights

Skilled technicians and tradespeople waste nearly an entire workday per week on administrative tasks, according to a new Salesforce survey, leading to burnout and other challenges. AI agents — which can understand and respond to inquiries without human intervention — have emerged as a potential lifeline. “Solutions like Salesforce’s Agentforce, which provide autonomous AI agents that can take on mundane and time-consuming tasks like scheduling, will take the busywork off the plates of these critical workers so they can focus on what really matters: keeping our world running,” said Taksina Eammano, EVP & General Manager of Field Service at Salesforce. In this edition of The Salesforce Scoop, see how AI agents are augmenting field service teams for businesses like AAA - The Auto Club Group.

With 84% of CIOs believing AI will be as significant to their business as the internet, strategic implementation is a competitive necessity. But many organizations aren’t sure where to start, how to scale AI agents, or how to measure success. Organizations must align AI initiatives with business goals, ensure high-quality and integrated data sources, establish governance frameworks as agent autonomy increases, and invest in upskilling teams to foster seamless human-agent collaboration. Addressing these pillars accelerates adoption and drives sustainable AI maturity. To provide a structured path for CIOs and IT leaders, Salesforce developed the Agentic Maturity Model — a framework that outlines the key stages for AI agent progression and actionable steps for advancement. The levels of agentic maturity are: 0️⃣ Fixed Rules and Repetitive Tasks: Automation of repetitive tasks using predefined rules, with no reasoning or learning capabilities. 1️⃣ Information Retrieval Agents: Agents that assist humans by retrieving information and recommending actions. 2️⃣ Simple Orchestration, Single Domain: Agents that autonomously orchestrate low complexity tasks in a siloed data environment. 3️⃣ Complex Orchestration, Multiple Domain: Agents that autonomously orchestrate multiple workflows with harmonized data across multiple domains. 4️⃣ Multi-Agent Orchestration: Any-to-any-agent operability across disparate stacks with agent supervision. https://lnkd.in/eCq78TeG

What if scheduling chaos gave way to seamless, AI-driven dispatches, with field technicians spending less time wrestling with clunky apps and paperwork and more time focused on turning wrenches and supporting customers? A recent survey indicated more than a third of field service representatives feel administrative tasks impede their core job functions, and listed scheduling as their #1 productivity blocker. Agentforce for Field Service uses AI to streamline scheduling, data capture, and job summaries, reducing administrative burdens and boosting productivity. It also integrates seamlessly with mobile devices, providing intuitive, hands-free access to crucial information. Salesforce VP of Product Management goes deeper on this innovation, including how customers like AAA - The Auto Club Group are able to rapidly deploy Agentforce, in a new Q&A. https://lnkd.in/eQDUCPb3

A Salesforce survey shows tradespeople and technicians waste over seven hours a week on inefficient, unproductive, or low-value tasks, equating to a weekly loss of over $260,000 for a company with 1,000 technicians. But AI agents — which can understand and respond to inquiries without human intervention — have emerged as a potential lifeline. In fact, the survey reveals an overwhelming enthusiasm among this workforce for AI agents to ease their burdens and scale their impacts, with 81% believing AI agents can help them do their jobs more efficiently. “Technicians and other workers in the field are the backbone of our economy. Yet, amid a growing skilled labor shortage, a tightening economy, and rising materials prices, they are being stretched thinner than ever before,” said Taksina Eammano, EVP & General Manager of Field Service at Salesforce. “Solutions like Salesforce’s Agentforce, which provide autonomous AI agents that can take on mundane and time-consuming tasks like scheduling will take the busywork off the plates of these critical workers so they can focus on what really matters: keeping our world running.”  Companies like AAA (The Auto Club Group) and Axis Water are seeing the benefits of this technology, cutting response times, reducing go-backs, and getting technicians out the door and on the road to customers faster. https://lnkd.in/eagNtKJ3

Inefficient scheduling is the #1 time drain on field service teams, and skilled tradespeople and technicians waste nearly an entire workday a week on administrative work. That’s why Salesforce is launching Agentforce for Field Service — the digital labor platform built for field service, that augments dispatchers and technicians with trusted AI agents to eliminate scheduling bottlenecks and tackle routine, time-consuming tasks. Agentforce integrates seamlessly into existing data systems and user interfaces to help teams complete jobs faster, reduce truck-rolls, and serve more customers better than before. And with audio playback and natural language voice commands, field technicians can conveniently interact with Agentforce and consume information while on the move — boosting productivity, safety, and response times. Businesses like AAA, CPI Security, and Axis Water Technologies use Agentforce for Field Service to boost productivity, onboard technicians faster, serve customers more efficiently, and grow their businesses. “At AAA, seconds matter when it comes to roadside service delivery," said Scott VerBracken, Vice President of Automotive Services at AAA the Auto Club Group. "With Agentforce for Field Service we have reduced our response time by five minutes on average — which equates to saving 20,833 days a year. In addition, we've seen a 30% reduction in our overall attrition and turnover because of improved employee morale.” https://lnkd.in/eVkFYfnK

Indeed is deploying Agentforce to help employees focus on more meaningful, strategic work — boosting engagement, productivity, and overall job satisfaction. With 595 million job seeker profiles and 24 million jobs, Indeed is aiming to shorten the job-search duration by 50% by 2030, in part through adopting AI technology that will help support teams work faster and smarter. Indeed uses Agentforce to take on repetitive tasks from client-facing teams, essentially forming a 24/7 digital support team so employers can move through the hiring process quicker and easier. "Say, for example, an employer notices Indeed has flagged one of their job postings," said Anthony Moisant, Chief Information and Chief Security Officer, Indeed. "They can exchange messages with an Agentforce-powered AI agent to learn the reason, like having an overly long job title. Agentforce can suggest how to resolve the issue, allowing the employer to quickly move forward in the hiring process with an improved, high-performance job posting." https://lnkd.in/eUVYu_3q

While large language models (LLMs) today make up much of the conversation about AI, the real revolution is happening in digital labor: autonomous, intelligent agents. "AI agents allow small businesses and even sole proprietorships to scale where they couldn’t before," Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce wrote in a recent op-ed for WSJ. "With digital labor, small businesses can compete at much lower cost. A small financial advisory firm, for example, might once have needed staff for sales and customer service. Now, AI agents can take on outreach, respond to inquiries and automate back-office processes." Through his 25 years at Salesforce Benioff has seen many waves of technology, but he believes nothing he's seen compares to the current AI transformation. "At the consulting giant Accenture, our Agentforce digital labor platform is extending the reach of the firm’s 52,000 sales people around the world," he said. "These agents let Accenture’s human sellers spend more time building relationships with clients and solving their problems." Benioff believes business is the greatest platform for change, and feels agentic AI will revolutionize work and create a more prosperous, sustainable world. And, by focusing on trust, accountability and common humanity, agentic AI can become a force for good. https://lnkd.in/es8qnJ-t

Certinia, the leader in professional services automation, is leveraging Agentforce to help organizations manage processes from sales to delivery. The key benefits Certinia's customers experience with AI agents include: ➡️ Automating Resource Management: Agentforce enables the creation of resource management agents that can automate staffing challenges, such as backfilling when someone is sick, freeing up human resource managers for more strategic tasks. ➡️ Proactive Customer Success Management: Customer success agents powered by Agentforce proactively monitor customer health, identify engagement opportunities, personalize messaging, and prepare comprehensive reports for customer success managers ahead of reviews, enhancing productivity and customer experience. ➡️ Improving Revenue, Utilization, and Profitability: By augmenting human teams with AI agents, customers will see the potential for higher revenue, improved utilization and billability, increased profitability, and overall growth in their professional services business. “Agentforce is a bazooka innovation that is absolutely critical for differentiating everyone in the marketplace," said Raju Malhotra, Certinia’s Chief Product & Technology Officer.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts AI will write 90% of code within six months and dominate nearly all coding within a year. While many worry this signals the replacement of developers, they may be missing the bigger picture. Salesforce sees something more nuanced — and far more promising. Developers aren’t being replaced wholesale. They are moving up the stack. As AI takes on repetitive aspects of programming — such as boilerplate code, test generation, and documentation — developers can turn to higher-order work like designing systems, solving novel problems, and shaping overall strategy. “AI agents are shifting my role from being purely technical into a more strategic side of the business,” said Maham Hassan, a Dubai-based Salesforce Architect at Cloud-1. “Instead of spending time on repetitive code analysis, code reviews, or ensuring we have a scale solution and architecture in place, I can focus on designing more scalable architectures, optimizing business processes and driving innovation.” Salesforce is actively building tools that support this shift. Proprietary, internal tools like CodeGenie are already boosting developer productivity at the company. CodeGenie has handled more than 7 million lines of code, answered 500,000 developer questions, and saved at least 30,000 hours per month — reducing labor costs and making developers more efficient.

Unity Environmental University has established itself as the first higher education institution in the United States to deploy Agentforce. Unity introduced an AI-powered agent named “Una” that promises to revolutionize student engagement and streamline administrative operations. Dr. Melik Peter Khoury, President of Unity Environmental University, explains that Una represents a fundamental shift in how students interact with the institution: “As we integrate Agentforce into our workflows, we can quickly address standard questions like financial aid details or class registration while freeing our team to engage more deeply with students.” The immediate implementation focuses on prospective students, guiding them through admissions and program selection, but Dr. Khoury’s ambition extends far beyond the current deployment. The school looks to a future where every student has a dedicated AI agent to support their entire educational journey, beyond graduation. SalesforceDevops recently covered how the institution is leveraging Salesforce’s technology stack to address critical challenges facing higher education today, from student recruitment to retention and operational efficiency.