UPDATED 09:00 EDT / OCTOBER 09 2025

AI

Salesforce aims to shake up IT service delivery with AI agents

Salesforce Inc. is imbuing its 16-year-old Service Cloud with artificial intelligence agents in a new suite designed to deliver what executives described as a “conversation-first, agent-first” experience.

The company is positioning Agentforce IT Service as an evolution from ticket-based information technology service management to an interactive dialogue with autonomous resolution built into widely used collaboration tools such as its Slack platform and Microsoft Corp.’s Teams.

The new cloud application provides an agentic IT service desk with the ability to answer common questions, generate service tickets and even remotely diagnose and repair some problems. All functions are compatible with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, a global framework of best practices for IT service delivery.

Multiple AI agents can work together as subject-matter experts to support employees and IT teams in resolving complex problems. Connectors, integrations and workflows help integrate with an organization’s existing IT portfolio.

Employee-centric approach

The new product grew out of customer demand for a more employee-centric approach to service, said Kishan Chetan, executive vice president and general manager of Salesforce Service Cloud.

“We’ve consistently heard that our customers want the same experience that we enable them to provide to their customers to their employees,” he said. “ They want to engage with employees in a personalized, proactive manner.”

Salesforce cited recent research by WalkMe Inc. that found that the average enterprise wastes more than $1 million a week in lost productivity due to IT support inefficiencies. Chetan said traditional ITSM systems have struggled to meet modern expectations.

“Teams have spent a lot of money trying to automate IT service,” he said, “but most of the time, questions are translated into a form and a ticket.”

The outcome, he added, is a slower response and more work for IT teams. “As you create tickets and more issues for the IT team, you slow them down,” he said.

Salesforce said its Agentforce IT Service reimagines support around a conversational interface and delivery through the applications employees prefer. “Whether they’re in Slack, Teams, email or wherever, employees have the ability to get the right information right there,” Chetan said.

Instead of submitting tickets and waiting for responses, employees can ask questions such as whether they qualify for a laptop upgrade. The system automatically checks individual profiles and company policies to provide tailored answers without IT intervention.

Proactive diagnosis

The platform also takes a proactive approach to managing some problems. During widespread issues, such as an email server outage, Agentforce can alert affected employees, deliver live status updates and track incidents through to resolution.

For complex or sensitive situations, Agentforce can route requests to IT personnel along with relevant context and diagnostic insights. Salesforce said these capabilities together move IT support from a reactive, ticket-based model to a conversational, predictive and collaborative approach.

Agentforce IT Service builds on Salesforce’s existing Service Cloud, which about 70,000 customers use. Asked if the company intends to leverage its large installed base to challenge category leader ServiceNow Inc., Chetan said the strategy is broader than that.

“There’s a lot of unfulfilled demand in the market,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll run into ServiceNow, but we’re very confident of our continued innovation.”

Muddu Sudhakar, Salesforce’s senior vice president and general manager of IT and HR service, echoed that sentiment. “I think the world will be much bigger where we’ll coexist,” he said.

Guardrails

With concerns about the trustworthiness of generative and agentic systems topping the agendas of enterprise leaders, Sudhakar said keeping humans in the loop was a core design principle.

“It’s very important that every step of the way, humans are involved,” he said. “Live agent escalations provide guardrails so AI agents don’t deviate and become rogue. The employee has the option at any point to go from talking to an agent to a live human IT team member.”

Omar Baig, chief information officer at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, called Salesforce “a mission-critical app platform” and expects to deploy the new service to support more than 60 offices worldwide.

“The key challenge that I’m facing is how to deliver more with less,” he said. “We need the tools and platforms to [provide support] with zero downtime.”

Chetan said Salesforce expects agents to spur a large-scale replacement of legacy help test systems. “The industry is going through a rapid transformation with agents and conversation first,” he said. “There’s a fundamental shift that’s going on in the market.”

Photo: Flickr CC

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.

  • 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
  • 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.

Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.