How to Build a Three-Phase Plan for Agentic AI Success

Many brands are seeing the benefits of agentic AI extend far beyond efficiency – it has become a direct driver of revenue. This blog will examine the use case of one hospitality group that has used a three-phase agentic AI plan to create a powerful engine for loyalty and growth.

It all started five years ago when the company embarked on a journey with Salesforce to grow and engage its customer base. In that time, the group has driven measurable increases in loyalty and campaign-level ROI. The company’s transformation and early success with Agentforce provide valuable lessons on how to maximize engagement in the age of agentic AI.

Let’s take a deeper look at their story, including tips for how you can maximize engagement and ROI. 

Data-driven transformation boosts loyalty and ROI

For many consumer brands, the biggest opportunity for growth isn’t in acquiring new members, who tend to join organically, but in investing in member retention. This was the case for the hospitality group and the reason why it embarked on a digital transformation to enhance customer communication, service, and overall experience. 

The group’s transformation was guided by three key objectives:

• Obtain a full 360-degree view of the customer to centralize and maximize first-party data
• Enhance business analytics to boost efficiency and equip the executive team with actionable data for informed decision-making
• Introduce hyper-personalized marketing capabilities across all channels to increase customer loyalty and engagement

Once member data was centralized on Salesforce, the company used Marketing Cloud to hyper-personalize communications. 

With better segmentation, AI-driven personalization, and the ability to continually optimize messaging and send times, it has achieved up to 13x return on campaign investment. Members are also more loyal, visiting venues about 6.6 times per year, compared with just four times in the past. 

Fast-tracking success with Agentforce 

The group’s structured, data-driven journey has paved the way for its use of Agentforce.  It developed a three-phase plan to apply agentic automation across its business.

The first phase, a customer-facing service agent, went live in just six weeks. It successfully reduced inbound calls to the contact center by almost 10%, which freed up the team to focus on high-value, revenue-driving conversations — supporting growth in their department.

Plus, the service agent allows the business to be there for members when they want to communicate. A staggering 33% of all messaging sessions since launch have taken place when the call center is offline.

Building on this success, the business launched phase two and enabled members to interact with the agent to update their profiles, manage marketing preferences, and carry out tasks like making restaurant reservations

The vision for phase three is to roll out Agentforce for Marketing. This will involve using the campaign creation agent to drive even more ROI through advanced segmentation and personalization.

Paving the way for accelerated time to value 

The business’s thorough planning and preparation helped fast-track the first two phases of its Agentforce launch. Its approach included: 

• Change management: The project team engaged with C-level executives, senior managers, and frontline employees to identify drivers and desired outcomes from AI. These conversations helped the group set targets and prioritize use cases.
  
• Operational readiness: Using Data Cloud, the team focused on unifying, cleansing, and validating the data AI agents needed to work. It also analyzed call center data to better understand customer interactions and optimize knowledge articles to answer common questions. To further support operational readiness, the team reviewed resourcing and established roles and responsibilities for processes such as updating knowledge articles.
  
• Identify and prioritize use cases: The team made the strategic decision to go live with a customer-facing agent, rather than starting with an internal tool. The primary use case was to enable agents to handle routine queries, thereby giving the call center team more time to focus on high-value calls, such as booking large corporate events. 

Tips for maximizing engagement and ROI

Underpinning the business’s entire transformation has been a sharp focus on measurable returns. This approach empowers the team to be agile, reallocating funds away from activities with unclear ROI and doubling down on what works. 

Here are a few tips for engagement and ROI:

• Start with a clear vision, not the technology. You don’t need to be a technology expert to succeed with agentic AI. Instead, the most critical element is having a clear vision and conviction in what you want to achieve and communicating this to partners and internal stakeholders.
  
• Invest strategically. Every dollar spent must have a strong business case and a clear path to driving revenue.
  
• Maximize first-party data. Strong, first-party customer data is key to understanding members and driving hyper-personalization.
  
• Use AI to augment your team. A critical part of the group’s change management was ensuring the call center team understood that the agent was a tool to help them. The agent enhances their work by handling routine inquiries, freeing them to focus on high-value conversations. This approach has encouraged adoption and made the team’s work more rewarding. 

The group is now focused on the next evolution of its strategy, where agentic marketing will enable even stronger personalization, enhancing engagement and driving further campaign-level and bottom-line ROI.

Marketing Cloud Next can bring agentic marketing to life and put an end to ‘do-not-reply’ messages, so every communication channel becomes a two-way conversation. With agentic marketing, brands are targeting further increases in campaign level and bottom-line ROI. We’re still in the early days of this technology, but use cases are showing how it can make a difference.