How Joey Monroe Extends the Impact of Non-Profits with Agentforce

Joey Monroe, Senior Salesforce Consultant with over five years of experience with the Salesforce ecosystem, approaches the challenge of AI that is constantly evolving by being an active practitioner and developing his expertise by “jumping into Agentforce with both feet.” 

Now an internal Subject Matter Expert (SME) at BlueGator, Joey sees AI agents not as replacements, but as powerful augmentation tools that manage the mundane tasks, allowing employees to focus on strategic work and delivering exceptional customer experiences. Read on to hear how Joey leads his teams, drives successful Agentforce implementations across diverse industries, and why his passion for community, non-profits, and learning continues to inspire him.

What’s a typical work day look like for you?

As the lead consultant overseeing broad projects across five different verticals, including Agentforce, my days are always changing. However, a typical day starts with project management, checking in with my individual teams and stream leads through daily stand-ups to make sure they have what they need and resolve any blockers immediately. This ensures I stay on top of issues. I then update our Jira board, handle individual tasks, and attend lots of meetings. 

A critical part of my time is carving out time for architecture and design for products, such as implementing Agentforce for Service Cloud. Ultimately, the day varies based on our immediate needs; one day I might be building an agent or an action, and the next I might be focusing on Service Cloud work.

Above, you mentioned a couple of different types of organizations that you work with. What are the Salesforce products you commonly use to support your customers?

Our niche is largely arts, culture, entertainment and hospitality as our bread and butter. As our CEO puts it: Anywhere you might take your family on a weekend. Most are nonprofits within the spaces. To support these areas, we use a wide variety of Salesforce products. These include Agentforce Sales, Agentforce Service, Agentforce, Data 360, and Agentforce Marketing. We also leverage Non-profit Cloud and still support some of our smaller clients who are on Non-profit Success Pack (NPSP), which is where my own roots lie.

We deal with all of those products along with lots of different ticketing systems that go along with those venues and all sorts of different third party integrations and other tools that our clients may need. In the non-profit, arts, and culture space, they’re similar, but each individual one is very, very different from the others, so they have all sorts of different tool sets that we get to play with.

What are some of the common challenges that you face at work that AI helps remove for you?

AI really helps when I’m trying to do research and dig into a problem, essentially serving as a second set of eyes on a lot of things. Before I started learning Agentforce, I used ChatGPT and other models to help me do research; I would give it some use cases and my thoughts to get a secondary opinion, allowing me to go back and forth. This dialogue with the AI model really solidifies my thought process and cuts down on the time where I might be second-guessing myself or unsure of the next step. Having a second brain or a second set of eyes on something is incredibly helpful, and that helps cut down the time I need to take so I can focus on other things. It’s almost like using it as a soundboard, an assistant, kind of all of the above, and that is along the same vein as what we are trying to accomplish with Agentforce for our clients.

With over 5 years working in the Salesforce ecosystem, how have you approached learning and staying up-to-date with new products like Agentforce? Do you have a piece of advice or what is your biggest piece of advice for someone who may just be starting out with Agentforce?

With Salesforce in general, I’ve found everyone learns a little bit differently, but for me, getting my hands on it and really diving in, whether that be a developer org or spinning up something in a sandbox, really helps solidify what I’m learning. I don’t go and collect certifications unless I am actively working on that product; I use the certification as a capstone for my learning to solidify that I understand the material, I’m comfortable with it, and I’ve proven that I’m headed in the right direction. This approach started when I began with Salesforce. I worked with a local non-profit and they gave me a blank Non-profit Success Pack instance and essentially said, “Can you learn this and implement it for us?” It was a lot of trial by fire, honing in on what I needed to learn in that moment and projecting a path of where I wanted to get to.

That leads directly into the advice I give for someone starting out: Salesforce is a gigantic product, and it’s very easy to become overwhelmed and try to do too many things at once. I’ve mentored many people, and the most common thing I see is folks collecting certifications just because they think it makes them stand out, but they are doing themselves a disservice because they aren’t really building on a foundation. You have to lay that groundwork and then build from there in a more focused fashion. They need to know what industry vertical they want to go into, and even what type of practitioner they want to be, an admin, developer, or architect. Once they build out that focus, they become much more successful. That applies to Agentforce as well; it’s one product, but it runs the gamut of all different types of use cases, so you really have to lay the foundation and build from there.

Does BlueGator use Agentforce internally?

We are starting to use it internally. We are standing up an SDR (Sales Development Representative) agent of our own and just kind of playing with it as we’re building one out for our clients. We are also scoping out an internal agent to link together some of the knowledge we have available. We’re trying to eat our own dog food, so to speak, to make sure we can speak intelligently to a client if they ask us how we use it.

From your interview, to kickoff the Agentforce Keynote at Dreamforce 2025, you mentioned that you’re a SME internally on Agentforce. How did you develop your Agentforce skills over the last year?

We found the need through our client because they were asking a lot of questions about Agentforce, especially back in the early days when it was brand new and many things were still called Einstein. We wanted to be able to answer those questions intelligently, so as the lead on that project, I took it upon myself to jump into Agentforce with both feet, figure it out, and pressure test it to make sure it was the right fit.

From there, it was basically just getting my hands on everything I possibly could. The Agentblazer Statuses on Trailhead were super helpful for structuring my learning and hitting key milestones. Along with those, I attended many of the online workshops that Salesforce put on and created my own dev org. Getting hands-on really started connecting the dots for me, because the curriculum doesn’t quite fully connect until you actually start building it, interacting with it, and understanding how it operates.

My initial journey progressed into building out proofs of concept (POCs) in our client sandbox, using real data and real interactions. We worked in the sandbox until we all agreed it could do some really cool things. We then refined that agent and put a small, controlled POC into their production org in June of this year. We saw really good results; it did what we thought it would do, and we scoped it pretty well for our very first agent. We were able to keep things controlled and smooth, having it interact with both customer-facing and internal staff with pretty minimal changes needed afterward. From that point forward, it became about refinement and thinking, what’s next? We slowly broadened the scope, which is how we wanted to approach it: start with a small, controllable scope that had a clearly defined return on investment, and that paved the way for everything else.

What has it been like to take the knowledge you’ve learned and help others in your organization develop their skills? How have you supported peer development?

It’s been great! At the very beginning, learning Agentforce was like drinking through a fire hose of content, and building it out was the application stage. From there, the firm’s direction was clear: I couldn’t be the only one who knew this, so the goal was to enable everyone else and get all of our consultants Agentforce certified.

To support their journey, I put together a study group where we went through the material and the Agentblazer Statues together. We discussed what questions they had and what didn’t make sense, and I brought in the learnings from our proof of concept for the rest of the consultants. This was super helpful for them, but it was also really helpful for me because it solidified that I understood what I had done to a point where I could now teach others. It reinforced what I just learned through that feedback loop of learning, teaching, and iterating.

I also enjoy being able to take those real world learnings and give back to the Agentblazer Community on Slack, because these are not hyperbole or theory; these are what we actually learned from an implementation, which can hopefully make someone else’s hurdles a little less difficult. At the end of running through that study group and those workshops, we were able to get all of our consultants Agentforce certified. Now, I have several of my staff working on building their own agents, which is cementing everything they’ve learned and accomplished through getting certified.

Today, how has Agentforce changed the way employees at your organization work and employees at your clients?

From an internal perspective, we are far more open to using AI products (e.g., Agentforce, GPTs, etc.) because we recognize the value in reducing time spent on repetitive tasks like transcribing meetings, taking notes, or generating documentation. These are low-value tasks that AI can assist with so we can focus on strategic direction and technical implementation.

For our clients, it has been so helpful because they have a limited amount of staff to handle particular scenarios. Our first POC was for a client whose case volume suddenly went from about 400 cases a day to 7,000 due to a seasonal crush of orders. A lot of what they were answering were simple FAQs or order changes—the perfect scenario for an AI to handle and deflect. This allowed their staff to focus on more complex cases and ensure their customers have the best experience possible. It helps take away those mundane tasks.

Are there any specific technical learnings that you’d like to highlight from the work that you’ve done internally or with clients?

From a technical side, the biggest learning is that you can go absolutely wild with a use case and get really complex by doing things intricately through Apex, code, or APIs out to other tools. However, what we quickly found is that you can accomplish a lot of what you need the agent to do far more simply through flows, instructions, and prompt templates. This is crucial because things built this way are much easier for a client or customer to manage, especially if they don’t have an in-house developer. 

A lot of our clients don’t tend to have developers, so if we write something in Apex, it becomes a challenge for them to manage. I’d say 80 to 90% of the use cases we come across don’t require code; we can handle them through Flow and prompt templates. The key takeaway is to start far more simply than you think you might need to, and then figure out if the complexity is actually necessary or if you can accomplish the same goal more easily.

When working with clients, how do you talk about the impact of humans and AI agents working together? Any general success metrics you’re comfortable sharing?

We generally talk about this not in a replacement capacity, but in an augmentation capacity. The goal is to take away the mundane and monotonous tasks that can be offloaded to AI so people can do more of what they do best: Sellers can focus on closing business and building relationships instead of sending out cold emails; Service reps can focus on more complex, higher-touch tasks, sitting with a customer to ensure they feel well-supported; and customers benefit from quick interactions and are not waiting on hold for basic questions. No matter the use case, we think of augmentation first and ensure the agent is enhancing the team, not attempting to replace anyone on that team.

Change management is a key piece to driving adoption of a deployed agent, what’re your best practices for enabling the people at a customer?

The number one thing is communication. We need to get everyone on the same page and communicate what the goals are, what we’re hoping to accomplish, and how we’re going to approach the individual stages. This ensures they feel comfortable that it’s not just going to smack them in the face. Beyond that, it’s about taking baseline measurements or KPIs of where they were when we started versus 3-6 months down the line. We show the progression over time and drive adoption by proving that the staff are seeing benefits. Finally, we must enable all stakeholders and their teams along the way to ensure they have a voice and can provide feedback for iterations.

What’re you excited to try or learn more about with regard to Agentforce?

Agent Script is really exciting for me because it lowers the technical barrier for a lot of people to create agents. This creates opportunities for quicker POCs and even production agents, allowing people to feel a sense of ownership and learn in a quicker way. It also makes troubleshooting easier.

The other big things are Agentforce Voice and Model Context Protocol (MCP). This allows us to connect out to other external tools or even other external agents. Since every platform has its own versions of AI agents, being able to communicate across them will become increasingly important, especially when we need to cohesively reference data points in disparate areas.

What made you choose the Salesforce ecosystem as a career path?

Prior to Salesforce, I had been in IT for about 10 years, supporting Enterprise Resource Planning systems. The opportunity to learn and implement Salesforce came when my first non-profit job needed an IT manager who could also implement it.

I grew to really enjoy the Salesforce product, but also the ecosystem and the community around it, I hadn’t really experienced a community quite like that. Being in the non-profit sphere was also attractive because I enjoyed being mission-driven and supporting causes I could believe in. From there on, Salesforce and non-profit were kind of tied together for me.

In 2025, you’ve been featured in a Business Insider article and awarded the first-ever Golden Hoodie at an Agentforce Keynote at Dreamforce, what have these moments and opportunities meant to you personally?

They’ve meant a lot! I don’t really think of awards or acknowledgments when I’m doing things; my focus is always on my team, my client, and giving back to the Salesforce Community. Being featured and being told that I have something to say was really impactful. I love the recognition for all the hard work, but my primary focus will always be giving back to people wherever I can.

Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing?

Outside of work, I enjoy playing video games, going out in nature with my wife and dogs, and traveling. I also scuba dive and am a licensed rescue diver. I learned to swim at 27 because I was terrified of water and decided I didn’t want to be anymore. I found that I absolutely love the water now, so that’s a big hobby of mine.

Joey’s top 3 Agentforce learnings

1. Starting with the question of “Can AI do this?” is fine, but the very important follow up consideration is “Should AI do this, and why?” Digging further into what the value proposition is, the risk profile, as well as does this serve your customers, clients, or employees. Does it make their interactions or jobs easier, or will it make it more frustrating?
2. Proofs of concept can be done far more simply than people might think. It’s easy to come up with grandiose ideas and dig into all the cool possibilities. Starting small, in a controlled segment, with measurable return on investment is extremely valuable in the learning phase. It’s not glamorous, but it can save an initiative from breaking up on impact with proper due diligence.
3. Just get started. You don’t need a production-worthy use case or an imminent need to start learning and tinkering in developer orgs, sandboxes, etc. The act of beginning the journey creates momentum and uncovers gaps in understanding. AI literacy is very important to not be behind the curve as things progress so rapidly within the space.