In every corner of the enterprise, leaders are grappling with how to put artificial intelligence to work without locking power behind lines of code. As companies chase efficiency and better customer experiences, the ability to build and trust AI agents has moved from a futuristic dream to a boardroom demand.

For too long, building and deploying AI agents has been the playground of technical teams, leaving business leaders and subject matter experts on the sidelines, according to Nancy Xu (pictured), vice president of AI and Agentforce at Salesforce Inc. The divide between what’s possible and who can participate has left organizations struggling to unlock the true potential of their data and workflows.

Salesforce’s Nancy Xu talks with theCUBE about how Salesforce is shifting who gets to shape AI inside the enterprise.

“What’s critically unique about the Salesforce and Agentforce platform is that we make it possible with the platform interface for your non-technical people, your admins, your developers [and] your service teams to participate in that agent building process,” Xu said. “This for us is super critical based on our learnings for customers to be successful.”

Xu joined theCUBE’s John Furrier and George Gilbert at Dreamforce, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Agentforce’s platform, the agentic lifecycle and how Salesforce is shifting who gets to shape AI inside the enterprise. (*Disclosure below.)

Agentforce aims to make developing AI agents everyone’s business

With more than 12,000 customers already building AI agents on Agentforce, Salesforce’s platform is fueling adoption across industries well beyond sales and service, according to Xu. Companies are not only bringing their own data into the platform, but also leveraging a powerful suite of tools designed to make AI agents scalable and predictable at any level of complexity.

“We have OpenTable, [a] consumer company. We handle about 70% of their case deflections for them today when people ask about dining questions,” Xu said. “We have other customers like 1-800Accountant. During peak tax season … we help them deflect 90% of their customer inquiries. That is so phenomenal … especially for a company that is so driven by cyclical events, we can help agents scale up and scale down based on what your organizations actually need.”

A central part of this accessibility is Agentforce’s approach to development. Users can build AI agents through natural language prompts, a low-code interface or directly in Agent Script, a new scripting language, Xu explained. The platform’s unified experience means business leaders and subject matter experts can shape workflows alongside developers, making the agentic lifecycle a collaborative process from day one.

“We can talk all day about how we can do enterprise transformation, but the core thing is business leaders need to be bought in, understand what the use cases are really trying to drive and measure the outcomes,” Xu added. “The second stage, building — we are going to make it so easy for anybody to build an agent … There’s no other product that makes it easy for … non-technical people to build those agents … so that anybody in your organization can participate in that process.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of theCUBE’s coverage of Dreamforce:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dreamforce. Neither Salesforce, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE