Salesforce Announces Revolutionary AI Agent Capabilities
Salesforce will unveil two groundbreaking capabilities next week designed to make its AI agents more versatile and powerful for businesses, according to exclusive information obtained by Axios.
Why This Matters
Salesforce faces intensifying competition from tech giants with their own large language models and startups focused specifically on AI-powered customer service solutions.
The Breakthrough Features
Salesforce agents will now possess voice capabilities and hybrid reasoning skills that represent a significant leap forward in artificial intelligence technology.
- The upgrades aim to make AI agents sound more human while maintaining strict adherence to business rules for critical decisions like processing refunds
Dreamforce 2025 Announcement
The features will be part of a major announcement series at Salesforce's annual Dreamforce event next week.
- Agentforce Voice works across phone systems, websites and mobile applications, with general availability scheduled for October 21
- Hybrid reasoning will debut as part of Agent Script feature, currently in pilot phase with customer beta testing beginning in November
Executive Insight
Both innovations reflect that there's no universal approach to AI agents, according to Salesforce Executive VP Adam Evans.
- "You can have the creativity and fluidity when you want it, or you can have the rigidity, consistency and scale when you don't"
- "It's your choice on a job-by-job basis"
- Companies value that bots don't sound robotic but also require them to maintain consistent approaches
- "If you're doing 100,000 transactions with the customer and some of them are different than the others, that's not a feature - that's a bug"
Development Journey
Salesforce invested approximately one year developing the voice features, concentrating on speech comprehension, nuance detection, and emotional recognition to enable appropriate responses.
- The voice system can integrate data from multiple systems and smoothly transition to human agents when necessary
- "There's not very many companies that can do that," Evans emphasized
Competitive Landscape
The enterprise customer service agent market is highly saturated with intense competition from established players like ServiceNow and emerging startups such as Sierra, co-founded by former Salesforce executive Bret Taylor.
- Sierra prices services based on interactions resolved without human intervention
- Salesforce maintains a model charging by conversation duration or task volume
- Sierra mandates AI bot identification for voice agents
- Salesforce doesn't require disclosure for certain uses like internal company agents
Comments
Join Our Community
Sign up to share your thoughts, engage with others, and become part of our growing community.
No comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts and start the conversation!