Salesforce expanded its agentic AI into HR and consumer goods while also challenging large language model makers to improve their technology and perform common business tasks better.
On Tuesday, Salesforce released Agentforce for HR Service, a set of tools integrated into its HR Service suite. HR Service is not an HR system of record, such as Workday -- one of Salesforce's biggest partners -- but rather an adjunct technology that can enable a better, more efficient employee experience with self-service.
HR applications are historically bad at HR service delivery, said Rebecca Wettemann, founder of Valoir, an independent research firm. HR applications might be great for managing payroll and paid time off, but when employees have individual questions or complex issues that might be better suited to case management, "it's historically been 'call HR and ask them,' or 'email HR at a common mailbox,'" she said.
Agentforce for HR Service is both an employee portal -- which can be connected to Slack -- and a console for HR staff that provides a dashboard of employee data, engagement history and case details through a prebuilt MuleSoft connector that integrates with HR systems.
Agentforce generative AI tools can be set up to manage expense reports, submit time-off requests, manage direct deposit details and perform a host of other manual tasks. Agents can also answer employee questions through knowledge base articles and policy documents.
When you think about CRM, it's people and workflows; if you think about employee experience, it's mostly people and workflows.
Rebecca WettemannFounder, Valoir
Salesforce has had HR tools for years but has contented itself to create services that augment existing HR applications without developing or acquiring its own HR system of record.
"When you think about CRM, it's people and workflows; if you think about employee experience, it's mostly people and workflows," Wettemann said. "So there's a lot of technology that Salesforce developed from a customer management perspective that translates really well to the employee space."
Agentforce for Consumer Goods
Released in mid-April, Agentforce for Consumer Goods gives brands new tools to help manage relationships between consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers, their distributors and retail stores. Agents can take on communications with a CPG company's key accounts, schedule field sales routes and automate some facets of customer service.
Salesforce is well-suited to manage "last-mile" tasks a CPG company performs -- such as dispatching trucks to a warehouse or checking stores to ensure advertising signage and product placement is correct, Wettemann said. Those tasks resemble the things the company's Field Service offering -- which got its own Agentforce integration last month -- handles.
"Salesforce has been building out their consumer packaged goods industry solution forever," Wettemann said. "For customers that have taken advantage of those capabilities and already have their data in Salesforce -- and their flows in Salesforce -- putting Agentforce on top of this and being able to automate a lot of those last-mile things [is a good fit]."
Salesforce Research: Agentic AI benchmarks
Salesforce's research arm is quietly developing open benchmarks for AI agents for internal use in a project called CRMArena. According to an article published on Cornell University's open-access research archive, the benchmarks cover 16 business tasks such as case routing and monthly trend reports.
Most large language model (LLM) agents fail the CRMArena benchmark tests more than half the time with ReAct prompting, the article's authors -- all from Salesforce -- said. They call the standards an "open challenge" to the AI community to develop tools that "showcase direct business value" and better complete benchmark tasks common to Salesforce users.
Silvio Savarese, executive vice president and chief scientist at Salesforce, said the company might make future versions of the benchmarks available to Salesforce users to test the performance of their agents as they build them.
"This is a bit of an internal prototype we have now, but we will definitely be considering offering [them] to customers when the technology is ready," Savarese said.
Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.
