Salesforce Agentforce FAQs: Expert Answers to Your Top Questions

No coffee, no downtime, no limits- just a tireless assistant at your service.

Well, that dream is now a reality with Agentforce, Salesforce’s cutting-edge AI-powered virtual agents.

Unveiled at Dreamforce 2024, Agentforce is designed to revolutionize business operations by seamlessly managing customer inquiries, streamlining employee tasks, and ensuring smooth business operations around the clock.

These intelligent agents leverage your company’s data to make decisions and complete tasks without human intervention. In essence, Agentforce promises to bring your business into a new era of efficiency.

Salesforce has been a leader in AI for years, but with the launch of Agentforce, the company is pushing boundaries even further, unlocking real, tangible value for businesses.

Amid the growing excitement around AI-driven tools, the big question remains: Will Agentforce truly live up to the hype?

In this post, we’ll dive into some frequently asked questions about Agentforce, exploring why it could be the game-changer businesses have been waiting for.

Agentforce Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Agentforce has been generating a lot of buzz lately, but as with any innovation, many questions remain. Are Salesforce customers truly prepared for this? Are organizations and teams equipped to leverage Agents effectively? Is this a genuine breakthrough or just another overhyped concept?

Here, we’ve addressed some of the most common questions about Agentforce to help you gain a clearer understanding.

Q1: What Exactly is Agentforce?

Agentforce is a low-code platform from Salesforce that makes it easy to build and deploy autonomous AI agents to assist employees and customers. With pre-built templates, even teams without coding expertise can create AI-powered agents tailored to their business needs.

These AI agents use Salesforce tools like Flows and Apex, tapping into large language models (LLMs) for language processing and decision-making. They pull from CRM data, external sources, and metadata while adhering to privacy and security standards. For complex issues, they can escalate to human representatives, ensuring a smooth customer experience.

Built on the secure Einstein Trust Layer, Agentforce offers strong data protection and dynamic responses, adapting in real-time to interactions and operations.

Q2: What Are the Different Types of Agentforce Agents Available?

Agentforce offers a range of autonomous agents that can operate seamlessly across sales, service, marketing, and commerce. These agents are designed to streamline various processes and enhance productivity. Here are the different types of Agentforce agents you can deploy:

• Agentforce Service Agent: This agent autonomously resolves customer cases around the clock, handling interactions across multiple channels with natural, human-like responses.

Q3: Are Agentforce Agents Chatbots?

No. Unlike chatbots, which follow predefined rules to perform repetitive tasks, Salesforce Agents are advanced digital assistants capable of understanding your business needs, developing strategies, and taking meaningful action.

Agents are also far more adaptable than chatbots. With Agentforce, businesses can create agents tailored to various business scenarios by:

• Defining the agent’s specific role
• Granting access to relevant data sources (e.g., CRM, ERP, or external databases)
• Setting operational boundaries for the agent’s actions
• Building automation that the agent can use to meet its objectives
• Integrating the agent with internal (e.g., Slack) or external (e.g., company website) platforms so it can interact with the right audiences and perform its designated role

Q4: Is Salesforce Agentforce Secure and Reliable?

Agentforce leverages Salesforce’s cutting-edge security features, including the Einstein Trust Layer, to protect data and restrict access to only authorized users. With advanced security protocols like data encryption and stringent access controls, your sensitive information is thoroughly protected.

Salesforce also maintains top-tier security by performing regular audits and following industry best practices to safeguard Agentforce and its users.

Moreover:

• Salesforce security policies extend automatically to AI agents, with zero-retention agreements ensuring no data is stored or misused.
• AI agents follow defined guardrails, handling complex tasks while rejecting inappropriate requests.
• Agentforce detects and blocks harmful or toxic interactions in real-time.
• Sensitive data is masked before reaching AI models, with audit trails and feedback data deletion available for added control.

Q5: How Can I Get Started with Agentforce?

Setting up Agentforce in Salesforce is quick and easy.

Simply go to the “Your Account” section and add Agentforce Service Agent SKU to your cart. Once you include the Agentforce Service Agent SKU, the corresponding SKUs will be automatically added.

After setup, activate both Einstein and Einstein Copilot for Salesforce. For practical experience, check out the #BuildWithAgentforce Quest on Trailhead to create and test your agent within a sandbox environment.

Once set up, you can test the agent’s functionality and customer experience by deploying it in a digital experience.

If you’re not able to set it up yourself, consult an expert Salesforce Agentforce partner.

Q6: Who Gets Access to Salesforce Agentforce?

While Data Cloud isn’t mandatory to use Agentforce, it greatly boosts its functionality when integrated. Customers on Enterprise, Unlimited, Performance, or Einstein 1 (formerly Unlimited Plus) editions can access Agentforce, which follows a consumption-based pricing model based on the number of conversations.

With the purchase of conversations, you also receive a set number of Einstein requests and Data Cloud credits.

To maximize benefits, it’s recommended to have Data Cloud set up. There are ongoing discussions about offering a freemium consumption model, but specifics are yet to be confirmed.

Q7: What Level of Customization is Available Within Salesforce?

You may have heard that building Agents in Salesforce is often a clicks-not-code experience. This is because Salesforce thoughtfully provides key building blocks to make the process straightforward.

At its core are topics and topic actions, which guide the agent on the best steps to take in various situations. These actions help ensure the agent follows the most appropriate course based on the scenario at hand.

Behind the scenes, actions are essentially flows, prompts, Apex code, or MuleSoft APIs that are linked to specific topics. These topic-specific actions are then grouped and assigned to an agent to execute.

When setting up a new action, you choose a reference type—such as Apex, Flow, a prompt, or MuleSoft API—and use the existing library of processes or APIs that have already been built.

Salesforce also offers standard prompts, such as generating sales or service emails, crafting service replies, and performing knowledge searches. For industry-specific needs, there are over 100 pre-built standard prompts available that agents can use.

Q8: Does Salesforce Agentforce Replace the Einstein 1 Platform?

At Dreamforce ’23, Salesforce unveiled the revamped Einstein 1 platform, previously known as Einstein GPT. This upgrade introduces a new level of security and privacy through the Einstein Trust Layer, ensuring that your organization’s data remains safe and protected. As part of this evolution, Salesforce introduced a suite of tools called Copilot Studio, which includes Prompt Builder, Skills Builder, and Model Builder.

Now, Agentforce has taken things even further. It goes beyond Copilot Studio by adding the new Agent Builder to the mix, alongside the existing Model Builder and Prompt Builder tools. This expansion offers more advanced capabilities for creating and managing AI-driven solutions within Salesforce.

Q9: How Does Agentforce Track Conversation Closures, and What is the Pricing Model?

As per Salesforce, Agentforce uses a conversation-based pricing structure, unlike the traditional licensing or consumption-based models seen in Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud. The starting rate is $2 per agent conversation, with potential volume discounts available.

This implies that each time an employee, partner, or customer interacts with an agent, a fee will be applied to your upcoming invoice.

If you’re looking to explore more about its pricing structure and if it’s a cost-efficient solution, read this blog post.

Q10. Are Agentforce Agents truly autonomous?

Yes, Agentforce Agents operate autonomously, but you control the extent of their independence. When creating an agent, you set its role, responsibilities, data and channel access, and target audiences, as well as specify any conditions where the agent should escalate tasks to a human employee.

Q11: Which AI Model Does Agentforce Use, and How Does it Differ From Traditional Models?

Agentforce leverages Salesforce’s collaboration with OpenAI and other large language models (LLMs) to process user input and trigger specific actions. Beyond OpenAI, Salesforce also allows businesses the flexibility to integrate their LLMs, offering a more customized approach to AI-driven automation. The LLM acts as an interpreter, with custom flows, prompts, or Apex code defining the tasks Agentforce performs. This flexibility distinguishes Agentforce from traditional models by providing a dynamic, tailored, and adaptable automation experience.

Q12. Are AI Agents and Copilots the same?

No, they aren’t. While both are AI-driven tools, their roles and functions differ significantly. AI Agents act as autonomous ‘digital employees,’ carrying out tasks independently.

Einstein Copilot serves as a virtual assistant designed to help sales and service teams with their daily tasks. Although a Copilot can handle actions such as drafting emails, retrieving customer data, or suggesting next steps, it always requires human approval and doesn’t operate on its own.

On the other hand, AI Agents work autonomously without needing direct human input. For example, a Sales Development Representative (SDR) Agent can independently interact with leads, send emails, schedule meetings, and recommend products, without any human oversight.