Editorial
The Gist
- Retail AI focus. Salesforce introduces Agentforce for Retail, emphasizing scalable agentic AI to transform customer personalization and operational efficiency.
- Pre-built AI skills. New pre-built skills automate tasks such as order management, guided shopping, appointment scheduling, and loyalty promotion creation.
- Customer-centric innovation. Agentforce empowers retailers to deliver tailored customer experiences while driving productivity and reducing operational costs.
In "Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI," Mark Abraham and David Edelman emphasize that in today’s hyper-competitive landscape, delivering a seamless, tailored customer experience is paramount. Effective personalization hinges on leveraging comprehensive customer data to address individual needs across the extended journey.
The authors highlight the importance of starting with use cases that map key customer needs and employing AI to deliver the right customer experiences through the right channels. Success demands a 360-degree customer view, experimental design for precision targeting and orchestrating next-best actions to build direct, enduring relationships.
Table of Contents
- Salesforce’s Agentic AI for Retail
- Key Features of Agentforce for Retail
- Driving Retail Productivity
- Key Agentic AI Skills
- Retail Cloud-Based POS System
- Transforming Retail with Agentic AI
- Core Questions Around Agentforce for Retail
Salesforce’s Agentic AI for Retail
Today, Salesforce announced its pursuit of the above objectives with agentic AI innovations for retailers, called Agentforce for Retail. Agentforce for Retail includes a library of pre-built agent skills, making it easier for retailers to build retail AI agents that automate time-consuming tasks including order management and appointment scheduling and deploy rapid shopper personalization at scale.
Key Features of Agentforce for Retail
Specifically, this solution includes pre-built skills for order management, guided shopping, appointment scheduling and customer loyalty promotion creation. As an augmentation for human employees, Salesforce says its aim is to increase employee capacity across marketing, commerce, merchandising, and store operations with digital teammates that handle complex tasks with precision, accuracy, and personalization.
Related Article: Mastering Personalized Customer Experience for Growth
Driving Retail Productivity
With scalable digital labor, Salesforce says it will be able to help retailers reach new levels of productivity — responding to customer questions in real time, modifying orders, issuing returns, managing inventory, scheduling consultations and even coordinating with shipping providers — all without human intervention.
Key Agentic AI Skills
- Commerce Skills for Order Management: Automate order servicing, enabling customers to conversationally update shipping details or inquire about order status.
- Commerce Skills for Guided Shopping: Provide product recommendations and allow conversational product searches and checkouts.
- Field Service Skills for Appointment Scheduling: Use AI-driven scheduling for booking deliveries, installations or consultations in real time.
- Marketing Skills for Loyalty Promotion Creation: Assist marketers in creating targeted loyalty promotions with conversational prompts based on shopper and segmentation data.
Retail Cloud-Based POS System
Salesforce is also introducing Retail Cloud with Modern POS; retailers now get a cloud-based POS. This system brings online and offline shopping and inventory data together.
Features include:
- Clienteling, Inventory Management, Endless Aisle, and built-in AI powered by real-time shopper and inventory data: Associates can create and modify shopper profiles that capture shopping history, preferences and loyalty status; view and update inventory across warehouses, commerce channels, and supply chain; action on analytics from omni-channel customer, order, inventory, and sales performance data; and activate AI for voice assistance, return fraud analysis and personalized product recommendations.
- Mixed Cart and Omni-channel Fulfillment give shoppers more delivery and exchange options while reducing supply chain costs: An omni-cart architecture allows each line item to have its own fulfillment method, offering a single “mixed cart” with shopper fulfillment preferences including buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), buy-online-return-in-store and omni exchange.
- Mobile-first design and secure offline mode release associates from the checkout counter: Offline-capable software enables checkouts. Payment transactions are encrypted and stored, ready to be processed when an associate reconnects.
- Built-in Salesforce integrations and no-code CMS: Integrations with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Order Management and Service Cloud let retailers access customer data insights, order management cart synchronization, product information management, and more. The cloud-based CMS uses drag-and-drop features to tailor the interface for brands.
Related Article: Will Agentforce Be the Most Significant Innovation in Salesforce's History?
Transforming Retail with Agentic AI
This announcement highlights the transformative power of agentic AI in reshaping retail customer relationships and experiences. As Theodore Levitt highlighted in "The Marketing Imagination," success lies in the ability to "create and keep" customers.
Today’s winners achieve profitability and loyalty by industrializing processes and enhancing customer experiences, a strategy supported by MIT-CISR research. At the heart of this evolution is agentic AI, seamlessly integrated with systems and data.
Core Questions Around Agentforce for Retail
Editor's note: Here's a summary of two core questions around Salesforce's Agentforce for Retail and its impact on customer personalization.
Webinar
Sep
25
CMS Briefing: A Live Look at What’s Next in AI-Driven Platforms
Learn how leading organizations are using AI‑driven tools to publish faster, personalize smarter and stay secure.
Register
Webinar
On demand
Ready or Not: How Data-First Organizations Are Unlocking Agentforce Potential
Learn how to cut through the noise, activate Agentforce and build a Salesforce AI strategy that actually delivers.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
AI in Customer Service: Faster Resolutions, Happier Customers
Don’t let rising demand burn out your team. See how to build a smarter, more resilient support org.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
From Hype to High-Impact CX Strategies That Actually Scale
Turn buzzworthy AI and outsourcing trends into measurable CX wins with fresh 2025 data.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Insights to Action Rethinking the Contact Center for Real Business Impact
Join our exclusive webinar to hear CX executives share their innovative strategies for transforming service delivery.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Accelerating Healthcare Ops with AI
Sign up to see how your peers are putting AI to work — and making it stick.
Watch Now
What specific tasks can Salesforce’s Agentforce for Retail automate?
Agentforce for Retail automates tasks such as order management, guided shopping, appointment scheduling and loyalty promotion creation. These tasks enhance personalization and operational efficiency, enabling digital teammates to assist across marketing, commerce, and store operations.
How does Agentforce for Retail improve customer personalization?
By leveraging first-party shopper, inventory and operational data, Agentforce provides personalized recommendations, loyalty promotions and real-time scheduling. This AI-driven approach helps retailers better understand customer needs and deliver tailored experiences.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
