Uni Recycle drives the zero-waste economy with AI agents

Uni Recycle is driving forward the no-waste economy in Eastern Canada, helping large organizations securely reuse, repair, and recycle electronic products to benefit the community and the environment. The company’s customers include 80% of healthcare systems and 65% of school boards in Quebec.

Disconnected, manual processes were slowing growth, creating inefficiencies, and putting critical customer data at risk

Since launching in 2016, Uni Recycle has steadily expanded its reach across the region. It offers free recycling collection, but to keep that model sustainable, it needs to stay efficient and keep costs under control as it grows. And growth is central to Uni Recycle’s mission. The company is keen to extend its environmental impact beyond the immediate area, with plans to expand across Canada and globally. To make this happen, the company needs every process to be simple and efficient - from managing leads and completing sales to scheduling collections. 

In its early days, Uni Recycle's small sales team managed customer relationships with little more than a mobile phone and an online calendar. As the business took off, onboarding more than 10 new customers a day, the cracks began to show and Uni Recycle lost a significant amount of customer data. Following the incident, the team relied on spreadsheets for several months before recognizing that manual tools could not support the scale, reliability, or efficiency they required. The team needed a more robust, centralized system to manage customer relationships, streamline operations, and support its long-term growth ambitions.

AI agents handle customer queries, provide business insights, and support staff

Uni Recycle first adopted Sales Cloud back in 2017, as it recognized that the solution was not only the best in the market, but also had the scalability to underpin its growth plans. Since then, Uni Recycle hasn’t looked back. It’s added Service Cloud, Field Service, B2B Commerce, and Agentforce to create a seamless, integrated ecosystem as the backbone of its business.  

Uni Recycle’s vision for agentic AI involves deploying agents everywhere across sales, service, and internal operations to automating processes, support employees, and help customers. It’s already using Agentforce on its website to provide customers with instant, accurate answers to their queries in English and French. For example, if someone wants to schedule a collection, the agent can verify that they’re an existing customer, create a case, handle email verification, and even request images of items all automatically. If the user isn’t an existing customer, the agent sources all the relevant information before creating a lead for a human agent to follow up. And if the request falls outside the agent’s knowledge, it passes it to a human, ensuring nothing falls through the gaps. 

But this is just the beginning for Uni Recycle and Agentforce. The company has three more priority use cases next on the agenda: 

• Connecting Agentforce with Tableau and ERP data for smarter insights and to suggest the next best business move
• Using AI agents internally to help staff access information quickly and decide on their next action
• Fully embedding AI agents in their customer portal so users can ask questions and generate their own dashboards.

Uni Recycle is working with the Salesforce Signature Success Team to streamline its journey, with the team providing a single point of contact to guide the roadmap, coordinate architects, and keep projects on track.

Managing 6x more customers is simple with Sales Cloud

Since working with Salesforce, Uni Recycle has grown from 1,000 customers to more than 6,000. Sales Cloud makes it easy for Uni Recycle’s lean sales team to manage leads, opportunities, pipelines, and renewals. The team has started to introduce automation for routine tasks, such as disqualifying leads from personal email addresses since they only work with businesses, with more processes on the automation agenda. With Sales Cloud, follow-ups are easier, dashboards give instant visibility, and sales processes are faster and more predictable.

On the operations side, Service Cloud and Field Service have transformed how Uni Recycle handles the day-to-day business. Scheduling pick-ups is simple, work orders are created in seconds, and collections can be tracked in real time. This means field teams can see exactly where they need to be, managers can adjust schedules in real time, and the entire process is easier to manage and optimize. 

An online portal provides customers with easy access to recycling data and certificates

Uni Recycle now gives customers full visibility into their collections and recycling certificates, all through a self-serve portal built on B2B Commerce Cloud. They can request collections, view those scheduled, and access data on how they’re reduced environmental impact with the carbon emissions saved. This information helps them comply with internal audits and local regulations. Uni Recycle plans to add AI agents to the portal to provide its customers with dynamic reports. 

The team is currently preparing its customer data to deploy Tableau, which will provide Uni Recycle and its customers with intuitive dashboards so they can view business performance data more easily and gain valuable insights that will help further increase efficiency. Salesforce Account Engagement is also on the agenda, following ERP integration, to empower sales reps to nurture leads and strengthen engagement. 

With Salesforce, Uni Recycle is serving  more customers and having a bigger impact on the environment and in the community with fewer resources. Without it, the company would need twice as many employees to keep up with customer growth and processes. Automated emails and workflows make sure customers are always in the loop, showing that Uni Recycle takes service seriously, while also making life easier for the team behind the scenes.

But what really sets Salesforce apart for Uni Recycle is the capacity for innovation. The platform lets Uni Recycle stay ahead with new technologies and continuously improve systems without the constraints of traditional platforms.