There’s no shortage of AI tools promising to transform your business. From shiny new chatbots to workflow copilots and Cloud services providers, the landscape is noisy — and often disconnected.
But here’s the truth: if your AI strategy is bolted on, siloed from your core systems, and lacks context about your customers, it won’t scale. And it won’t deliver.
That’s where Agentforce, Salesforce’s suite of autonomous AI agents, comes in.
At Kelley Austin, we’ve seen firsthand how Agentforce empowers companies to design and deploy AI agents that operate within the systems your teams already use every day. Agentforce is not just another feature — it’s a scalable foundation for agentic AI that’s embedded, extensible, and enterprise-ready.
Here’s our top 5 reasons why Agentforce should be at the center of your company’s AI agent strategy:
Agentforce isn’t a third-party add-on — it’s natively integrated with the Salesforce Platform. That means your agents can access and act on CRM data without additional connectors, duplication, or security risks.
Why build an intelligent agent that’s siloed from your most critical asset: your customer data?
Too many companies make the mistake of deploying AI tools that live outside their CRM. Whether it’s a third-party chatbot, a standalone copilot, or a generic automation tool, these solutions often operate without full access to the one thing that makes AI truly valuable: context.
When your AI agent isn’t connected to the systems that house your customer records, service history, sales pipeline, and engagement signals, it’s flying blind. It might be smart in isolation, but it can’t take meaningful action in context. That leads to fractured experiences, poor handoffs, and missed opportunities.
Agentforce changes that.
By building AI agents directly within Salesforce, you’re integrating them with your system of record — and more importantly, your system of action. Agentforce agents don’t just observe your customer data. They understand it. They use it. They act on it.
When your agentic AI solution is embedded into Salesforce, your AI agents gain immediate access to:
That level of integration allows Agentforce to go beyond answering questions. These AI agents can make decisions, trigger actions, and collaborate across teams.
Because at the end of the day, your most valuable asset isn’t the AI itself. It’s your customer.
And your AI tools should be working in service of them — not in a silo.
AI isn’t just about what your agents can do — it’s about what they should do, and how responsibly they do it. And as companies roll out Agentforce and other AI-powered apps across Sales, Service, and Marketing, one foundational truth emerges: AI without strong data governance isn’t innovation — it's a risk.
Unlike traditional rule-based chatbots or process automation tools, Agentforce and other intelligent AI agents thrive on large volumes of dynamic customer data. That includes everything from support case histories to purchase records to sensitive personally identifiable information (PII).
And the more sophisticated the agent, the more data it consumes — and the higher the stakes if that data is mishandled.
So how do you move fast with AI while staying secure, compliant, and trusted? With a governance-first approach that’s already baked into the Salesforce platform.
Here’s how Agentforce, built on Salesforce, gives you a responsible AI foundation:
Data Masking for Safer Development: Use tools like Salesforce Data Mask to anonymize sensitive information in sandbox environments. This allows your teams to safely test and train AI agents without exposing real customer data — helping you stay compliant with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA.
Centralized Compliance & Privacy Management: Manage data rights, consent, and compliance obligations in one place with Salesforce Privacy Center. Automate key processes like deletion requests, consent tracking, and policy enforcement to minimize risk while scaling Agentforce use cases.
Backup & Recovery for AI-Critical Data: Protect AI-driven operations with Salesforce Backup, ensuring your training data, interaction logs, and workflows are regularly backed up and quickly restorable. Maintain business continuity and avoid costly data loss or downtime.
Trust as a Strategic Advantage: Agentforce is secure by design — built on a platform trusted by enterprises worldwide. Rather than relying on risky third-party add-ons, your AI agents operate within a governed environment that enforces data standards, auditability, and transparency from day one.
Agentforce is more than a chatbot or copilot — it’s a fully autonomous AI agent platform. But the real power behind Agentforce isn’t just its reasoning capabilities. It’s the data that fuels them.
That’s why Salesforce built Agentforce on Data Cloud, a hyperscale data engine that connects and unifies structured and unstructured data across your entire business in real time.
Unlike point solutions that rely on isolated datasets or hardcoded logic, Agentforce taps into a living, breathing customer graph — so every action your agent takes is informed, contextual, and grounded in trusted enterprise data.
Here’s why that matters:
Agentforce uses Data Cloud to bring together data from CRMs, ERPs, data lakes, warehouses, support systems — even tools like Slack, SharePoint, and Google Drive. This includes unstructured data such as PDFs, chat transcripts, videos, and customer support tickets.
With this 360-degree foundation, your agents don’t just “guess” customer intent —they understand it in real time.
AI is only as good as the actions it can take. Data Cloud powers Agentforce with not only insights but real-time actionability across every Salesforce cloud.
Need an agent that qualifies leads using behavioral data from your website and product usage metrics from your data lake? No problem. Because Data Cloud natively connects those dots — no duplication, no latency, no patchwork integrations.
With Salesforce’s recent acquisition of Zoomin, Agentforce can now tap into unstructured enterprise knowledge trapped in content repositories like websites, CMS platforms, and even YouTube videos. That means agents can surface answers, draft personalized messages, and resolve cases faster because they have access to every relevant piece of your corporate brain.
With Data Cloud’s Zero Copy Partner Network, data doesn’t need to be duplicated to be useful. That means companies can scale Agentforce across clouds while keeping data where it lives — securely integrated, governed, and extensible. This future-proof architecture allows you to build agents that span sales, service, and marketing without rebuilding your entire data pipeline.
With Data Cloud, AI agents don’t just react — they reason, recommend, and take action at scale.
Whether you’re working with structured records or unstructured knowledge, Agentforce turns that intelligence into impact — all on a platform that was built to grow with you.
Most AI solutions require lengthy integration projects and custom data engineering just to get off the ground. But with Salesforce and Agentforce, your agents are built on a platform that already houses your teams, your workflows, and your data.
That means less ramp-up time, faster ROI, and the ability to evolve your AI use cases without re-platforming or rebuilding from scratch.
The bottom line? Agentforce isn’t limited to what’s in your CRM record. It draws from the full depth and breadth of your business — securely, in real time, and at scale. When your AI agents have access to everything, they can act on almost anything.
You don’t need a new AI platform to start seeing value. With Agentforce, you can build your first agent on top of your existing Salesforce org and architecture.
Start small with an SDR Agent that automates your sales outreach efforts. Or deploy a Service Agent that triages incoming service cases based on urgency and priority. The possibilities scale with your ambition — without requiring a rip-and-replace of your tech stack.
While many generative AI pilots stall, Agentforce lets companies deliver autonomous agents in weeks, not years. According to independent Valoir research, Agentforce helps organizations deliver autonomous AI agents with:
Pre‑Tuned Models & Integrated RAG: Agentforce ships with pre-trained LLM models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Atlas Reasoning — all part of the platform. No need to train models from scratch or assemble RAG pipelines. DIY builders often spend 3–12 months setting up models and RAG; Agentforce customers are productive in days or weeks.
Accelerated Data Integration: Because your CRM data already lives in Data Cloud, RAG, and Service Cloud Knowledge speed up integration — weeks instead of months.
Low‑Code Prompting, UI & Workflow Tools: Agent Builder and Prompt Builder remove complexity. DIY prompt engineering often takes ~12 months; Agentforce achieves production-ready agents in ~1 month. Customers can deploy an agent prototype in less than 3 weeks, and push to production in a 6‑week sprint with minimal coding.
Trust‑First with Guardrails & Tuning Tools: The Einstein Trust Layer and Agentforce Testing Center provide robust guardrails. DIY guardrail and security engineering often requires 18 months; Agentforce brings it to market with zero upfront effort. Tuning efforts go from ~24 months (DIY) down to ~1.6 months (Agentforce) — with accuracy increasing from ~52 % to ~91 %.
The Virtual ROI on Agentic AI: Valoir’s analysis showed DIY agentic AI projects average 75.5 months, while Agentforce implementations required just 4.8 months — a 16× acceleration.
This isn’t just speed — it’s quality at scale. Agentforce shifts focus from integration complexity to business logic, accuracy, and innovation, delivering faster time-to-value AND higher trust.
If your goal is to accelerate agentic AI at scale, Agentforce isn’t just a convenience — it’s the foundation. It offers pre‑built models, secure data access, low‑code tools, and reliable guardrails so your teams can deliver intelligent, trustworthy agents faster, with less risk and greater impact.
One of the most powerful — and often overlooked — advantages of Agentforce is its declarative configuration model. Built natively on the Salesforce platform, Agentforce follows the “clicks, not code” philosophy, making it faster, more accessible, and far less risky to deploy and evolve intelligent agents across your business.
It’s a game-changer for how enterprises build AI capabilities that are both scalable and sustainable.
Agentforce allows teams to configure and launch AI agents through a visual interface using tools they already know — like Flows, Prompts, Apex, and MuleSoft APIs.
With Agent Builder, admins and developers can define agent behaviors using natural language, assign actions to specific topics, and establish what knowledge or data sources the agent can access.
No custom development cycle. No complex handoff between AI engineers and business users. Just direct, fast configuration.
Each Agentforce deployment is built around topics (the types of inquiries the agent can handle) and actions (the steps the agent is allowed to take). For example:
All of this is built declaratively — meaning business logic lives in the platform, not buried in custom code.
With declarative configuration, your teams can spend less time writing code and more time solving business problems.
In the context of Agentforce, it puts the power of building AI agents into the hands of the people who understand your processes best — and gives them the tools to bring AI to life faster, smarter, and more securely. Benefits include:
Faster Time-to-Value: Prebuilt components and visual design tools mean AI agents can be created in days or weeks instead of months.
Easier Customization: As your business evolves, so can your agents (without requiring refactoring or re-architecting).
Lower Maintenance Costs: Declarative logic is easier to troubleshoot and upgrade. You reduce technical debt and avoid vendor lock-in tied to custom codebases.
Broader Participation: Salesforce admins and power users — not just developers — can actively build, tune, and maintain agents. That democratizes innovation across your org.
In the end, this isn’t just about ease of use. It’s about empowering your organization to build the future of work — without waiting for the future to arrive.
For businesses that live in Salesforce, Agentforce is the most natural, powerful, and ROI-focused option for deploying AI agents across sales, service, marketing, and industry functions.
Other solutions like Glean are strong for cross-platform knowledge; Forethought shines in CX automation; and Sierra offers highly customizable conversational agents — but none embed as deeply into Salesforce’s platform, data, and workflows as Agentforce does.
If your Salesforce CRM is central to operations and you want AI that remains in‑CRM, scalable, and outcomes-focused, Agentforce is a compelling investment — especially with its new transparent and flexible pricing.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these agentic solutions and how they compare to Agentforce:
Main focus:
Agentforce is Salesforce’s native AI agent platform, designed to let businesses deploy intelligent, task-specific AI agents directly inside their CRM. These agents go beyond basic chatbots by executing real work across your Salesforce org in real time.
With Agentforce, you can build AI agents that:
What sets Agentforce apart is that these agents aren’t bolt-on tools — they’re part of the Salesforce platform itself. That means they interact with your data, workflows, and users natively
Ideal for:
Organizations that have invested in Salesforce as their core CRM and system of record across departments — whether it’s Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Revenue Cloud, Marketing Cloud, or all of the above.
Agentforce is purpose-built for businesses who want their AI agents to live where their data lives. Unlike third-party AI platforms, which often operate at the edges of your business, Agentforce enables intelligent automation at the center of your operations.
Agentforce keeps your data, processes, and automation unified under one roof — making it faster to implement, easier to govern, and better aligned with the tools your teams already know and use.
Main focus:
Glean positions itself as a "Work AI" platform designed to improve workplace productivity through enterprise search and generative AI. Rather than focusing on specific business functions like sales or service, Glean enables employees to surface information from across their digital workspace.
Ideal for:
Organizations that use a wide array of SaaS tools and want to reduce context switching by bringing search and automation into one pane of glass. Glean is particularly valuable for knowledge workers, engineering teams, and operations staff who frequently need to access information scattered across different platforms.
However, if your business is centered around Salesforce — and especially if your most critical workflows live inside Salesforce Sales, Service, or Marketing Cloud — Agentforce is likely the better strategic fit due to its deep CRM workflow integration and Salesforce-native agents.
Main focus:
Forethought is a specialized AI support agent system. It automates ticket triage, conversation routing, summarization, resolution suggestions, knowledge‑gap detection, and service rep assistance.
Ideal for:
Customer support teams that rely on traditional help-desk platforms like Zendesk, Freshdesk, or ServiceNow, and want to introduce AI into their workflows without undergoing a full CRM overhaul.
If Salesforce Service Cloud is your central customer service platform, Agentforce is typically the better solution due to its native integration with the platform, unified data and automation capabilities, lower operational friction, and scalability. If you've already invested in Salesforce, Agentforce offers a more powerful, efficient, and scalable AI solution embedded directly into the heart of your service operations.
Main focus:
Sierra is an AI-native platform that builds autonomous customer-facing agents designed to deliver high-quality, branded, multi-channel support experiences. Unlike traditional chatbots or helpdesk assistants, Sierra agents are positioned as full-fledged extensions of the business — trained on company data, fine-tuned for brand tone, and capable of completing business tasks.
Ideal for:
Enterprises prioritizing premium, personalized customer experiences at scale — especially in industries like retail, travel, eCommerce, or financial services where brand tone, trust, and service quality are non-negotiable.
For companies whose operations are tightly integrated within Salesforce — across sales, service, or marketing — Agentforce may be a better long-term investment. With Agentforce you get Salesforce-native execution, unified governance, scalable process automation, and more predictable cost structures compared to Sierra’s outcome-based pricing. With outcome-based pricing, customers only pay when the AI successfully completes a task or achieves a desired outcome, which can be harder to forecast in complex orgs with variable interaction volumes.
For businesses that operate primarily within Salesforce, Agentforce offers greater control, process depth, and CRM-native capabilities — making it the superior option for internal automation and long-term scalability.
You don’t need a massive investment or a six-month roadmap to begin seeing the value of Agentic AI. But you do need the right partner to help you get it right.
→ Get Started: Agentforce Quickstart
Our Agentforce Quickstart is designed to help your business launch its first intelligent AI agent in just 2–3 weeks — with minimal risk, clear ROI, and hands-on support at every step.
Here’s why having an experienced partner matters:
Strategic Use Case Selection: Agentforce can do a lot — but starting with the right use case is key. We help you identify high-impact areas where AI can make a real difference fast, whether it’s routing leads, triaging support tickets, or syncing account updates in real time.
Built-in Salesforce Expertise: Because Agentforce is natively embedded in Salesforce, your implementation partner needs to understand how to build flows, manage permissions, connect data, and scale automations within your existing CRM environment. We do all that — and more.
Accelerated Time to Value: With our pre-built templates, deep platform knowledge, and proven delivery framework, you’ll go from discovery to deployment in just 2–3 weeks — not months.
Change Management & Training: Even the smartest AI agent won’t succeed if your team doesn’t understand how (or why) to use it. We support onboarding, training, and documentation to ensure adoption from day one.
A Launchpad for the Future: Our Agentforce Quickstart isn’t the finish line — it’s the foundation. We’ll help you build an agent that delivers value now and sets the stage for broader AI adoption across sales, service, and operations.
Whether you’ve already got a use case in mind or need help identifying the highest-value starting point, we’ll guide you from idea to execution — and set you up for long-term AI success.
We’re helping companies across industries identify their first (and next) Agentforce use cases — ones that align with real business goals, not just hype. If you’re looking to build AI agents that are smart, secure, and scalable, let’s connect.
Your AI strategy shouldn’t live in a silo. It should live where your business does: inside Salesforce.
At Kelley Austin we're proud to provide tailored Salesforce solutions across a variety of industries. Our expert knowledge and many years of experience in all aspects of the Salesforce ecosystem have earned us high levels of satisfaction from our clients.
We're ready to find the right solutions for your industry today.