Following the highly publicized launch of Agentforce by Salesforce Inc. in September, the customer relationship management giant unveiled several enhancements for its AI offering today.

During a presentation for media and analysts in San Francisco, company executives emphasized how an ability to build and customize generative artificial intelligence agents will transform workflows across the enterprise. A key element in this approach will be the rise of digital labor, a trend at the core of the company’s strategy, according to Marc Benioff (pictured), chairman and chief executive officer of Salesforce.

“There is a vision that humans with agents can drive customer success together,” said Benioff during the media and analysts event today. “When you have digital labor, you have a level of flexibility that you did not have before. This is different and what is happening is really different. This is what AI was meant to be.”

Moving AI beyond CRM

This week’s announcements from Salesforce built on the company’s initial launch which included out-of-the-box agentic capabilities or skills. The company is adding a new library of prebuilt skills that can take action across any system or workflow.

This latter point formed a central element in Salesforce’s message: The company is moving its AI platform beyond the CRM arena.

“Agentforce 2.0 can now cross the boundaries of CRM,” Adam Evans, executive vice president and general manager of Salesforce AI, said in a presentation during the gathering in San Francisco. “It’s beyond CRM, it’s about every team and every workflow. This is about the entire enterprise.”

Agentforce 2.0 also includes enhanced reasoning and retrieval to handle nuanced questions powered by the firm’s Data Cloud and Atlas Reasoning Engine. This capability has already shown results for the company, according to metrics offered by Benioff, based on its implementation in the Salesforce online customer support portal. The company released data today that showed it was having 32,000 agent-driven conversations per week, resolving 83% of its customer support cases with 50% fewer escalations to humans.

“After a couple of months of pretty hard work, we’re live,” Benioff said. “Right now, there are thousands of humans working with thousands of agents working with thousands of customers. I believe that is helping to change our company. We have to be customer zero. If we can’t show that we can do it, it’s never going to happen.”

Seeking a competitive advantage

Part of making it happen will require trust on the part of users that AI agents can accurately and reliably perform the tasks required. Agents created through the Salesforce engine can be launched into a testing center for validation.

“We’ve opened up the entire state of what’s happening inside of Agentforce so you can audit every part of it,” Evans said.

During an impromptu gathering with members of the press following his formal remarks, Benioff expressed confidence that his company’s major bet on Agentforce will pay off. He noted that Salesforce has been acquiring AI businesses over the past decade in preparation for today’s agentic opportunity.

“Ten years ago, I had this existential freakout that AI was going to take over everything,” Benioff said. “Now we are on another wave of AI. Digital labor is a multitrillion-dollar opportunity.”

Salesforce’s CEO was quick to note his belief that the company was separating itself from the mass of companies with AI technology. The CRM provider has built its agent into a readily accessible screen on its customer support website.

“Just because you use the word ‘agent’ doesn’t mean you can deliver agents,” Benioff told the press. “Show me your site and where it’s running. It’s like the emperor has no clothes for a lot of these companies. My biggest surprise is how quickly we’ve been able to reach this level of success.”

Salesforce’s press materials listed Accenture plc, Finnair plc and IBM Corp. as major enterprise names among its current Agentforce clients. In the three months since unveiling the agentic technology at Dreamforce, the company appears determined to lift itself above the noise surrounding enterprise AI.

“This is a crazy moment for Salesforce,” Benioff said. “There’s only one company delivering autonomous agents at scale and that’s us. We’re creating a new industry.”

Photo: Mark Albertson/SiliconANGLE