Salesforce Inc. today introduced a series of artificial intelligence agents designed to make sales and technical support teams more productive.
The agents are rolling out alongside a new version of Agentforce Coworker, an automation tool built into several of the company’s cloud services. Most of the new features are generally available today. The rest will launch by year’s end.
Salesforce’s first new agent, Hunter, helps business-to-business salespeople find leads and craft outreach emails. It can also streamline the subsequent phases of the deal-making workflow. Salesforce says that Hunter automates tasks such as preparing salespeople for presentations and creating proposals.
Some business-to-business deals take weeks to close. According to Salesforce, Hunter can operate over such large time scales thanks to a module called the long-horizon runtime. It enables the agent to develop long-term work plans and reuse data across chat sessions.
On launch, the runtime is only available in Hunter. Salesforce plans to integrate it into more of the agents that debuted today further down the road.
Hunter is one of three sales-focused AI agents that debuted today. It’s joined by Piper and Carter, which companies can embed in their websites. Piper greets business-to-business prospects and directs them to the most relevant salesperson. Carter, in turn, helps online retailers answer consumers’ product questions. It includes an in-chat checkout widget.
Customer support teams that use Salesforce are receiving access to two new agents. The first is called Casey and can automate tasks such as processing product return requests. It’s joined by Fin, which is designed for similar support use cases. The latter agent is based on technology that Salesforceobtainedearlier this year through a $3.6 billion acquisition.
The company is also releasing an automation tool for internal help desk teams. Paige, as the agent is known, can field employees’ HR questions and technical support requests. It’s joined by an agent called Marshall that will automate repetitive tasks for supply chain teams.
Companies can customize the agents using a programming syntax called Agent Script. According to Salesforce, it enables developers to require that an agent carry out important tasks in a specific way. Such instructions reduce the risk of hallucinations.
The new agents are rolling out alongside an update to Agentforce Coworker, an existing AI agent built into several Salesforce services. It enables workers to interact with business data such as customer records. Agentforce Coworker doubles as a tool for managing agents created by colleagues.
The first enhancement is a feature called Multi-Agent Orchestration. It enables Agentforce Coworker to split a complex task among multiple specialized subagents. Another new feature enables it to continuously optimize those subagents’ output quality. Lastly, a capability called AI Skills will make it easier for workers to customize how Agentforce Coworker carries out tasks.
Photo:Salesforce
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