Nearly 700 attendees turned out to the Agentforce Summit Auckland last week, to hear how New Zealand businesses are using agentic AI to drive better customer experiences.
This included companies such as Fisher & Paykel, Team Global Express and One NZ, that are at the forefront of using Agentforce to drive significant improvements in their customer interactions, while supporting internal teams to be more efficient and productive in the process.
Embracing the agentic enterprise
For logistics solutions business Team Global Express, Agentforce has provided relief where calls almost tripled to the support team when onboarding a new large parcel customer. Up to 60 per cent of those queries related to delivery status, and with a further 4.5 million deliveries last year, that’s a lot of delivery queries being fielded by the team.
Simone Faile, GM Technology for Team Global Express New Zealand, explained how implementing Agentforce directly into its delivery track and trace system has improved how it supports its customers. “For our customer support team, it’s definitely taken away some of the pressure. They’re now getting through more delivery queries than they were ever able to get to. The experience has been a positive one, and step forward in the providing that extra support for our customers.”
“Our customers now interact with our agent Āwhina – meaning ‘assist, help, or support’ – to resolve queries about more than just delivery issues, with complex requests now triaged smartly to our team. Within the first 6 weeks, calls to the customer service team have dropped by 10-15 per cent, with positive feedback from customers about the service they are receiving.”
“As a customer-centric business, Āwhina enhances our customers experience with the potential to completely reshape our service model.”
With customer expectations around the use of AI for service continuing to grow, Hamish Miles, New Zealand Country Leader for Salesforce noted that local businesses were using the momentum of technology change brought about by agentic AI to provide new opportunities and deliver customer success.
“We’re empowering companies across New Zealand to bring agents to every workflow, moving beyond simple chatbots to autonomous AI agents that can deliver real business value, faster and with greater accuracy.”
“Agentforce is a game-changer for customer experiences, delivering instant, personalised, 24/7 support that customers now expect. By also empowering teams with a digital workforce that can automate and handle routine tasks, businesses are creating more space for their employees meaningful work, boosting productivity and overall engagement.”
Supporting customers around the clock
For Blair Rooney, Head of Growth at Farm Focus, implementing agentic AI was all about supporting current and future clients. “The average age of farmers in New Zealand is about 59, and we expect that 60% of our customers are going to retire in the next 15 years. So we’re not just designing a tool for today, it’s for the next generation of farmers who expect more from their customer service experience, who don’t want to call a call centre. They want to self-serve and get an answer right away.”
Built by farmers, for farmers, Farm Focus provides management tools that help support farmers to make more informed decisions about how they run their farms, using their own data. The business turned to Salesforce as part of a wider digital transformation that saw it consolidate its data from 40 different products and apps into one unified platform.
Now with Agentforce on board, farmers can access 24/7 support for the tools they’re using, receiving accurate and timely advice. “We want to adopt technology in the same way farmers do, using the right tool at the right time, and not just for the sake of it,” added Rooney.
“We want the customer experience to be meaningful and effective, to provide the right advice and escalate to our team if the query is complex, and not replace the human connection we work hard to build with our customers.”
More information
- Learn more about Agentforce
- Discover how Salesforce is testing Agentforce in real-time as ‘customer zero’
- Read more about Fisher & Paykel’s journey with Salesforce
- Find out about how One NZ are scaling with Agentforce
