Opinion

Benioff’s Agentforce gambit might just work

At Dreamforce 2024 in San Francisco, Salesforce announced the potential for its customers to embed virtual agents on its platform, so avoiding what the supplier dubs DIY GenAI. Will it work?

Brian McKenna
By
Published: 23 Sep 2024

Dreamforce 2024 saw Marc Benioff in combative form. Salesforce is bidding to unleash an army of agents, deployed against an alternative model of extensive Generative AI co-pilot use, associated with Microsoft, and others.

The supplier calls this army of agents “Agentforce”, and described it, in the main release for the event as “a groundbreaking suite of autonomous AI agents that augment employees and handle tasks in service, sales, marketing, and commerce, driving unprecedented efficiency and customer satisfaction”.

Salesforce’s chair and CEO was fired up. He argues that Generative AI in a “bolt-on, DIY” manner has yielded little to no business value for companies and other organisations. He advocates a platform approach where artificial intelligence is baked into applications, and makes full use of a legion of virtual agents working hand in glove with human agents.

To an audience of press and analysts just after his opening Dreamforce keynote he summed up the case, like a lawyer: “We think this is a better model, but you are the judge and jury. I rendered my case in the keynote and you now need to deliver your verdict”.

Unless customers are getting business value from AI, “it doesn’t matter”, he said, how cool GenAI “science projects” are.

He said: “There's a lot of narratives out there from vendors, and a lot of it is not true. You need to sit with those customers [at the event], look at the code and break the hypnosis coming from all the vendors.  There's plenty of real customers here who are really deploying real AI. But there are billions being invested in co-pilots delivering how much productivity increase. Is there a better way to do it? And so, that's our gambit”.

In the main release Benioff is quoted as saying: “Agentforce represents the Third Wave of AI—advancing beyond copilots to a new era of highly accurate, low-hallucination intelligent agents that actively drive customer success. Unlike other platforms, Agentforce is a revolutionary and trusted solution that seamlessly integrates AI across every workflow, embedding itself deeply into the heart of the customer journey. This means anticipating needs, strengthening relationships, driving growth, and taking proactive action at every touchpoint

“While others require you to DIY your AI, Agentforce offers a fully tailored, enterprise-ready platform designed for immediate impact and scalability. With advanced security features, compliance with industry standards, and unmatched flexibility. Our vision is bold: to empower one billion agents with Agentforce by the end of 2025. This is what AI is meant to be.”

It has to be conceded that the Salesforce gambit just might work -- though there seems to be a tension, if not a contradiction, between inveighing against DIY GenAI whilst encourage customers to build their own agents – millions of them. Benioff’s stated ambition for 2025 is to have “thousands of customers live on Agentforce … and a billions consumers interacting with agents” by the time of the next Dreamforce.

So, what is the appetite for virtual agent creation and deployment among enterprise IT users?

AI agents gather user attention

Recent research, published in September 2024, from TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, authored by Mark Beccue and Mike Leone, “The State of the Generative AI Market: Widespread Transformation Continues” has found that AI agents are attracting considerable attention among corporate IT users. In that study, 20% said they plan to integrate AI agents into their operations extensively, while 47% indicated that they are considering AI agents for specific use cases.

However, this study also found that respondents viewed AI agents judiciously and with tempered enthusiasm. 41% said they regarded such agents with “cautious optimism”, 35% with ethical and privacy concerns, and the same percentage as experimental technologies. A stubborn 14% viewed their reliability with scepticism.

The study also found that 47% of organisations are using more that one LLM [large language model] and that 43% will use a combination of open source and proprietary models over the next year or two to support their GenAI initiatives. So there is a real appetite to investigate and innovate among user organisations.

Nevertheless, the study also showed that suppliers that embed AI into their products or services – which is the Salesforce gambit – are attracting user interest: 54% said they were more likely than not to consider a supplier that was taking an embedded AI approach.

There were 832 respondents to the survey, which was global: 32% North America, 29% EMEA, 35% in the Asia-Pacific region, and 4% in Latin America.

Further TechTarget research – from its network of readers – shows that Generative AI has grown significantly in the last six months globally. As a topic of interest it has grown 47% among those interested in customer service and support, 28% among those interested in market automation, and up 21% among sales software focused readers. [Source: TechTarget Core Topic Growth Data (WW, Sept. 23 - Feb 24 vs March 24 - Aug 24)].

Salesforce put forward a group of customers who are using Agentforce, at the event., including Heathrow Airport, OpenTable, Saks, and Wiley.

Peter Burns, director of marketing and digital at Heathrow said, in a statement issue by Salesforce: “we’ve been really impressed with how Salesforce’s AI platform has improved our service operations, boosted customer satisfaction, and helped increase our digital revenue by over 30%. As Europe’s busiest airport, we’re committed to providing extraordinary service to the over 80 million passengers who pass through our Terminals each year. We’re excited about Salesforce's new AI features, which will help us enhance the travel experience even further and keep Heathrow at the cutting edge.”

With what Salesforce likes to call “Trailblazers” like these, the Benioff Gambit might just work. As the analyst cliché has it: time will tell.

Brian McKenna is a senior analyst at TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group, who focuses on business applications. Previously, he was the Business Applications Editor at ComputerWeekly.com.

Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with vendors.

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