{"id":11119,"date":"2025-04-22T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=11119"},"modified":"2025-04-24T15:56:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T14:56:47","slug":"agentforce-customer-support-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/in\/news\/stories\/agentforce-customer-support-lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from 500,000 Agentforce Customer Conversations \u2013 How AI Drives Empathy and Efficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Salesforce added Agentforce<\/a>, its digital labor platform, to the Salesforce Help site in October of 2024, giving customers 24\/7 AI-powered support.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a bold bet. The company was rolling out one of the world\u2019s largest agentic deployments<\/a> to date. But six months later, AI agents<\/a> have already handled more than 500,000 customer conversations and are resolving more than 84% of customer questions coming through Agentforce on help.salesforce.com<\/a> with a thoughtful balance of efficiency and empathy, giving support teams more time to focus on high-touch customer engagements and expand their professional skillsets.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernard Slowey, SVP of Digital Customer Success at Salesforce, was at the forefront of this remarkable transformation. He shared some powerful insights about how agents are redefining customer service \u2014 and why the future of digital labor<\/a> involves humans and AI working together for customer success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What were the biggest surprises from the first 500,000 conversations with Agentforce?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The biggest surprise was the speed of adoption by our customers. We went live on October 11, and the volume of customer interaction on the site was incredible. We hit that 500,000 conversation milestone in just a few months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also gained significant insights into prompt design and engineering within Agent Builder<\/a>, a low-code<\/a> tool in Agentforce that allows users to build and customize AI agents for various tasks across Salesforce apps. For example, we now instruct Agentforce to prioritize Salesforce’s interests in its responses, to avoid commentary on arbitrary topics, and to focus on offering support as if it were a representative within the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What’s driving Agentforce’s fast adoption on the Salesforce Help site?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Ease of use is a significant driver, but interestingly, another large driver is the added sense of comfort. We\u2019re seeing that customers are more willing to ask Agentforce questions that they might hesitate to ask a human support engineer, likely out of fear of judgment or embarrassment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There’s a different psychological dynamic at play when interacting with an autonomous AI agent. It feels less intimidating to most people. This is a big part of why Agentforce works so well in helping customers find the information they need.<\/p>\nBernard Slowey, SVP of Digital Customer Success at Salesforce<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There’s a different psychological dynamic at play when interacting with an autonomous AI agent. It feels less intimidating to most people. This is a big part of why Agentforce works so well in helping customers find the information they need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Where does Agentforce excel, and where do humans step in?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

AI<\/a> and human agents work best in tandem. We are continually analyzing conversations to identify the sticking points where customers transition from Agentforce to a human agent. By analyzing these interactions and evaluating what we \u2014 as humans \u2014 would have done differently, or what caused the need for human interventions, we are able to pinpoint areas for Agentforce improvement and refine the skill set. The two really go hand-in-hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, our human service reps and engineers are vital for complex or nuanced customer needs and identifying knowledge gaps, while Agentforce has the advantage of 24\/7 availability. However, we believe in our #2 value of Customer Success and if a customer needs to reach a human support engineer quickly, they can, and we enable that experience efficiently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In total, only 4% of Agentforce conversations are handed off to a human support engineer, which is a very positive indicator that agents are able to solve most customer needs. And we do not aim to lower this rate; the 4% is purposeful. We are constantly fine-tuning to find the right mix of agent versus human support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n