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If you’ve listened to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff over the past three months, you’re likely to believe he leads a company whose business is the future of work. A future that pairs digital workers (aka agents) who complete lower-level tasks with humans who take on work that requires creativity and innovation. Agents and humans, working together, deliver results the likes of which civilization has never seen before — or so Benioff’s pitch goes.
If it sounds a bit dramatic, Benioff will likely understand. “We’ve never seen anything like it,” he told investors on an earnings call earlier this month. "This is really a moment where productivity is no longer tied to workforce growth, but through this intelligent technology that can be scaled without limits."
The intelligent technology that Benioff was speaking of is Agentforce, Salesforce’s digital labor platform. With it, enterprises can design, customize and deploy autonomous AI agents for all kinds of tasks. The agents operate independently, retrieving information, developing action plans and completing work with little or no human assistance. The higher-level tasks that require creativity, innovation and analysis that humans excel at are left for them.
“This is not a vision, idea, fantasy … it’s what’s happening right now,” said Benioff.
It Works Now, No Waiting
At least that’s the case at companies like Adecco, Accenture, ACE Hardware, FedEx, Saks Fifth Avenue, RBC Wealth Management and more than 100 others who are building their digital labor forces on Salesforce’s Agentforce platform.
"Humans with agents can drive customer success together ... it's a fantastical idea. Right now, there are thousands of customers, humans and agents working in tandem," said Benioff, who predicts that Salesforce will deploy over a billion agents within the next 12 months. It should be noted that Salesforce has announced two Agentforce releases in the past three months. Agentforce 1.0 is available now, Agentforce 2.0 will be available in February.
The Agents Are Here
“With Agentforce you can create solutions and experiences — agents, that are always on and provide users and their customers with solutions at the moment they need them without waiting,” said Ryan Schellack, senior director of product marketing at Salesforce.
At book publisher Wiley, for example, Agentforce’s AI tools handle routine customer service tasks, enabling human representatives to focus on more complex issues. By leveraging Agentforce’s productivity features, Wiley onboarded seasonal agents 50% faster, saving $213,000, according to Benioff during the company’s Q2 2025 investor call.
"What’s being accomplished at Wiley can be accomplished elsewhere,” said Benioff. Their multiple (we’ve heard thousands) digital agents can not only work side-by-side, but they can do different things at the same time. And “if a digital agent can’t solve your problem or get the task done, it can be seamlessly escalated to a human being," said Benioff.
Related Article: Will Your Next Hire Be an AI Agent?
Agentforce Brings AI to Adecco
A lot has already been written about how employers are bombarded with resumes and job applications (Adecco receives about 300 million per year) and how anxious and angry jobseekers are when they fail to receive feedback. It’s a lousy experience for all involved. Adecco turned to Salesforce, and more specifically Agentforce 2.0, to solve the problem.
The first step was unifying data across over 40 systems on Salesforce's Data Cloud, then employing Agentforce with the intent to transform the candidate experience. The company then leveraged Agentforce to identify candidates who met the specs for the position. The agents then prequalify matching candidates and enhance their resumes (how do employers feel about this?) in order to ensure faster job placements. Worth noting too is that these agents can prep hiring managers and candidates for interviews. Because agents are available 24/7, managers, recruiters and candidates can schedule interviews and have conversations in Slack anytime.
Related Article: How I Decided to Launch an AI Chatbot in Our Recruitment Process
Agentforce Drinks Its Own Champagne
Salesforce itself uses Agentforce to provide customer service. “We drink our own champagne,” said Schellack. Experience it by going to Salesforce’s help page, where you'll be greeted with the question, “How can Agentforce help?” You don’t need to be a Salesforce user to try this.
A user might then type in a question like “How can I update my sales figures?” Agentforce will respond with a series of steps the user can take to resolve their request. If they don’t like the response, they can complain to Agentforce with a new question or comment like, “I don’t like that answer. There are too many steps.” Agentforce will then try to provide a solution with fewer steps.
This is an improvement over speaking to a chatbot or human being, plus it saves money.
The Agentforce “Help” function will help developers and super users as well. What’s special is that the Data.com platform is open and that developers (Agentblazers) have access to all they need. It works now, no waiting.
Related Article: Why Salesforce Really Bought Slack
Agentforce Plus Slack
Starting in early 2025, Agentforce capabilities will come to Slack. This is a big deal according to Constellation Research's Holger Mueller. “You have to meet people where they work,” he said. Agentforce in Slack will be able to complete actions on a user's behalf, including performing federated searches across business properties delivered with contextual results or recommend other agents with more in-depth capabilities.
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In spite of Benioff’s claims that Microsoft doesn’t use Copilot, Mueller and Microsoft said, “of course we/they do” and that Agentforce’s big advantage, for now, is its bridge between transformational algorithms and transactional data.
While Benioff is funny when he calls Copilot “Clippy 2.0,” he distracts from his pitch for Agentforce. Perhaps he should, instead, trust in his product and that the future of work he envisions are exciting enough.
