An AI agent is an intelligent system that can get work done proactively and autonomously, meaning it doesn't require human input. Agents can be triggered by changes in data and automations. They can understand and respond to human conversation dynamically. And they rely on machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to reason and handle a wide range of tasks, from answering simple questions to resolving complex issues.

Traditional chatbots require pre-determined conversation trees to respond to enquiries. In contrast, agents are dynamic. They can adapt to human language and conversation and they have the ability to reason. They make sense of the conversation, build a plan to address it, understand the tools available to them and then take the best course of action.

You can customise an AI agent to fit any use case and any industry. Salesforce offers a range of out-of-the-box agents for service, sales, marketing and commerce, so you can get started in minutes. These are just some examples of how agents can support your business:

• Service agents can automatically help a customer troubleshoot an issue with personalised, branded advice based on their purchase history and company knowledge documents
• SDR agents can send a personalised introductory email to a lead, respond to a question on pricing and access an account executive’s calendar to schedule a follow-up call
• Marketing agents can generate campaigns, briefs, audience segments, emails and end-to-end journeys based on your company's goals
• Ecommerce agents can manage your websites and generate personalised promotions

The Einstein Trust Layer protects customer data through robust security features and guardrails, like zero data retention, toxicity detection, secure data retrieval and dynamic grounding. It improves the safety and accuracy of outputs while ensuring the responsible use of AI agents across the Salesforce ecosystem.

For example, the Audit Trail feature provides the data you need to track AI agent actions and outputs, ensuring AI usage complies with your organisation’s security, privacy, regulatory and AI governance policies.

While other agent platforms require complex data integration and customised automation builds, Agentforce is already built into the Agentforce 360 Platform. You can instantly turn your existing workflows, prompt templates, Apex and APIs into agent actions — with the added power of native tools, like Data 360, Slack and MuleSoft. Agent Builder enables Salesforce admins and developers to use natural language to create jobs to be done, instructions, actions and guardrails for their agents.

Agentforce is deeply integrated with the Agentforce 360 Platform, which brings together all the data and context agents need from internal and external sources, with the Einstein Trust Layer built in. This enables agents to take accurate, relevant actions, which are faster to implement thanks to our low-code framework. You can reuse Platform tools like flows and Apex and build your agent on top of them.

Agentforce also connects to all the channels where your employees and customers already interact, including CRM, WhatsApp, Messenger and your website. There’s no need to go to another application to talk to an agent because they're bringing value to the existing flow of work.

Agentforce is suitable for businesses of any size. Salesforce customers can now try Agentforce for free with Salesforce Foundations, a $0 add-on for Enterprise Edition and higher.

Foundations helps businesses get ready for AI by extending their CRM with additional key features from Agentforce, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Data 360. Foundations now includes credits to power the first 1,000 conversations with Agentforce for Service, allowing your company to try its capabilities before buying.