Has Agentforce Moved from Hype to Reality? : Ross Collie
by: Ross Collie
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### Summary of Agentforce's Journey and Impact As Salesforce's Agentforce approaches its one-year anniversary, it has experienced significant evolution and scrutiny. Initially launched at Dreamforce 2024, Agentforce aimed to transform Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by utilizing advanced AI to enhance user experiences. Over the past year, it has seen multiple updates, including Agentforce 2.0, which introduced enhanced features and integration with Slack, and Agentforce 2dx, which allowed for more autonomous operations. The recent Agentforce 3 update focuses on improved monitoring and connectivity to external tools. Despite its rocky start, Agentforce has made a notable impact, surpassing 4,000 paid deals and generating over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. However, user experiences are mixed; while some professionals have successfully created functional agents, others have found the tool cumbersome and less effective. Salesforce's commitment to improving Agentforce is evident in its ongoing updates and community engagement. The company has also launched a new pricing model to align costs with business outcomes, but recent price increases have raised concerns among users. Training resources have expanded, including free AI certifications and new learning centers. Overall, while Agentforce has made strides, many in the community feel it has not fully transitioned from hype to a practical solution, emphasizing the need for improved functionality and user support. ### Key Points: - **Launch and Evolution**: Agentforce debuted at Dreamforce 2024 and has undergone several updates (2.0, 2dx, and 3). - **Market Impact**: Surpassed 4,000 paid deals and generated over $100 million in revenue within its first year. - **Mixed User Feedback**: Experiences vary widely; some users find it helpful, while others encounter significant challenges. - **Salesforce's Response**: The company is addressing concerns through updates, a new pricing model, and expanded training resources. - **Community Sentiment**: Many users believe Agentforce is still in the hype phase, calling for better functionality and support. ### Additional Context: Salesforce has invested heavily in AI development globally, with plans for community-driven events like Dreamforce to foster better communication and feedback loops. The introduction of the Agentforce Help portal has also shown promising results, handling over one million support requests. ### Hashtags for SEO: #Salesforce #Agentforce #AI #CRM #DigitalTransformation #BusinessIntelligence #CustomerExperience #TechUpdates #SalesforceCommunity #AITraining #BusinessGrowth #Dreamforce
As we approach the big day – a year since Salesforce’s Agentforce was unveiled – we have a lot to consider.
Salesforce’s proprietary artificial intelligence has been through the wringer in more ways than one, and as a tool that has been both praised and torn apart, it has seen a lifetime of evolution. With this, one main question stands: has Agentforce finally escaped its hype cycle?
Agentforce’s Journey So Far
For a company that didn’t really have the words “AI agent” in its lexicon until last year, Salesforce’s development of Agentforce has been both impressive and confusing at times. When it officially launched at Dreamforce 2024, it was very much the center of attention; an agentic platform built on powerful AI that could revolutionize the entire way CRMs functioned, working with your existing data to deliver more powerful, personalized experiences.
A mere three months later, Agentforce 2.0 was launched, equipped with “new reasoning, integration, and customization features that supercharge autonomous agents with unprecedented levels of intelligence, precision, and accuracy”, according to Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff. A big part of this release was an increased connection to Slack, as well as updates to the Atlas Reasoning Engine – the “brain” behind Agentforce.
A further three months later, Agentforce 2dx was announced. As one of the most dynamic updates to date, this new version of Agentforce gave Agentforce the ability to operate autonomously in the background of any business process – a considerable jump from the first version of the tool.
At this time, Salesforce also announced the AgentExchange – similar to the AppExchange, serving as a marketplace and community for Agentforce, built into Salesforce.
In May, Salesforce introduced a new flexible pricing model for Agentforce, offering customers a consumption-based model meant to align cost with business outcomes, rather than the “cost per conversation” model they had been running with since the launch.
Lastly, (at least at the time of writing this), Salesforce announced Agentforce 3 – the next installment that allows professionals to monitor agents in new ways and connect to external enterprise tools.
A key update here is the Agentforce Command Center, which acts as the hub for agent monitoring, efficient testing, and increased connectivity.
Agentforce’s Impact
In its 10 months of being out in the world, Agentforce has made an incredible impact on many businesses – something that some critics may be quick to dismiss, but the truth ultimately lies in the data.
There is no denying that Agentforce had an unsteady start, fuelled by confusion over who the tool would actually benefit and how expensive it was, but as of late, it has played a monumental role in Salesforce’s latest earnings and progressions.
In Salesforce’s latest earnings call, it was revealed that Agentforce had surpassed 4,000 paid deals and over 8,000 transactions, generating over $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) since its launch last year.
Financial contributions aside, it has also completely transformed Salesforce’s onward trajectory. Events have now been renamed and restructured to fit around Agentforce, roadmaps, marketing, and teams have now nearly all shifted to focus on Agentforce and AI, and hiring practices have also changed to support this initiative.
What Has Been Built?
Although earnings numbers and event changes do give credence to Agentforce’s impact, ultimately what matters is how useful it has been to the Salesforce ecosystem.
Experiences on this vary greatly depending on who you ask, with some professionals finding it too finicky and others being able to build full, working agents in a day. An example of the latter is Megan Higgs, a junior Business Analyst at Elements.cloud, who was part of a team that built an AI Agent for the NYC Women in AI event.
Her story is not a one-off either – spending enough time on LinkedIn will present you with numerous professionals who have also successfully built Agentforce agents, and you will also find professionals sharing their experiences on Reddit.
When someone asked the r/salesforce subreddit about what they had built on Agentforce, the answers were varied, but it was clear that the creativity in the community has been flowing.
“I’ve seen some cool CPQ agents where you give your reps a conversational input to create a quote with configured bundles, going a step beyond screen flows and guided selling,” one commenter wrote. “I’ve been making an agent that connects to Workday with a user query to make reports rather than users making them manually, and it’s interacted with through Slack,” another one commented.
The website seefoodie.com, although a little bare at first glance, is powered by Agentforce and generates custom visual menus with AI-generated images based on pictures of menus that you upload.
On the other hand, some professionals were quick to share a very different reality: one that was full of failed attempts or results that added more work instead of making things efficient.
“We replaced a working interface in a B2B portal with an agent that can look up orders,” one commenter wrote. “We literally repackaged a working solution and made it a touch bit worse for the customer experience… so in reality, nothing.”
Other commenters called Agentforce “a solution looking for a problem” and a tool that, once evaluated, did not match up to what they needed as a business solution.
Agentforce Help Portal: A Success Case
If there is one case that perhaps stands out from the rest in terms of success, it has to be with Salesforce itself, specifically with its Agentforce Help portal.
Last week, Salesforce announced that its Agentforce Help agent had handled over one million support requests, and the portal now handles approximately 130,000 conversations per month, with only 5-7% escalating to a human agent.
In fact, there has been a 2% growth in help portal usage compared to the previous year, while support volume has decreased by 5%. This reduction translates to 27,000 fewer cases.
Salesforce’s dedication to pioneering as “customer zero” with Agentforce not only demonstrates how much it believes in its own technology – it also shows its dedication to continuously working with, understanding, and developing it internally so that it’s delivered in the right way externally.
What Does the Community Think?
Throughout Agentforce’s entire journey, the Salesforce community has not shied away from sharing exactly what they thought about it – both a testament to how active and passionate the ecosystem is, and how critical it can be, too.
In fact, at the start of the year, I covered this in detail, sharing the community’s mixed opinions, joys, frustrations, and challenges, shortly after the second installment of the tool had been announced to the world.
However, as we’re now halfway through 2025, have opinions changed? Do professionals believe that Agentforce has moved from hype to reality?
For example, according to a recent poll I conducted on LinkedIn, 50% of respondents said that they thought that Agentforce had not moved past its hype cycle, and that it still had its issues.
11% of respondents said that yes, it had moved past its hype cycle, and either they or their team use it, and 17% said yes, and that they wanted to use it in the future.
This lean towards Agentforce negativity is also something that has recently reached a head, as after Agentforce World Tour London, a large number of professionals took to LinkedIn to share that Salesforce’s push for Agentforce had become far too much.
“Most are not ready for Agentforce,” said Connie Hazendonk, a Salesforce Trainer who had spearheaded this latest discussion. “Not even close.”
“Agentforce might be the future. But thousands of customers need help in the present.”
Pratik Tiwari, a Salesforce Admin, wrote in agreement: “AI is exciting, but many orgs are still struggling with the basics. Without clean data, strong adoption, and admin support, Agentforce feels out of reach.”
Others like Matt Pieper also stepped in to reflect similar thoughts, saying that core functionality was being ignored in favor of AI, but that there is no governance, observability, or proper tests around it.
A user on Reddit summed up this sentiment pretty succinctly, saying: “I’ve got 23 years working in Salesforce. I have yet to configure Agentforce in a way that is helpful. Learning Agentforce requires much better training than Trailhead can offer. Hope it changes – I have big plans for it. But only if it becomes easier to access the functionality needed.”
Has Salesforce Addressed Agentforce’s Issues?
Let’s focus on the present; it’s clear that the community is still torn between celebrating Agentforce and condemning it, but what has Salesforce actually done to address this?
Throughout my time covering Agentforce and its intricacies, five key areas of frustration have perpetually cropped up, and these are functionality, resolutions, costs, training, and community feedback.
Functionality
When it comes to Agentforce’s functionality, it’s evident that Salesforce has made the most of its releases and continuous updates to Agentforce as opportunities to expand on the tool’s capabilities. In the Summer ‘25 release, a whole set of AI features were brought to Marketing Cloud, we’ve recently seen the launch of Sales and Service Agents, and we’re also likely to see even more updates in the Winter ‘26 release coming soon.
With the release of Agentforce 3, many professionals also stated that a lot of the pre-existing concerns around agent monitoring have been addressed, and the new Model Context Protocol (MCP) has already helped companies to connect Agentforce with other tools and workflows they already use.
Although there is, unsurprisingly, some skepticism even now, it’s clear that Salesforce is doing what it can; a lot of Agentforce 3’s functionality and updates come directly from customer feedback. There is no denying that work still needs to be done to make the solution an all-around success, but the work to achieve this is happening now.
Resolutions
When Salesforce first began talking about how much their Agentforce Help agent was achieving, it immediately raised eyebrows with members of the community. Were these figures that Salesforce presented true? Was the agent really resolving that many cases? What on Earth counted as a resolution anyway?
This was something that Salesforce eventually picked up on and has now rectified, as explained in an interview with VentureBeat.
Joseph Inzerillo, Salesforce’s Chief Digital Officer, said that Salesforce had to reevaluate what a successful agent looked like in order to give customers what they expected.
“When we first launched the agent, we were really concerned about, like, data factualism, you know, what is it getting the right data?” he said. “Is it given the right answers and stuff like that? And what we realized is we kind of forgot about the human part.”
“We were literally high-fiving each other, going, ‘oh my god, like only 1%,’” Bernard Slowey, the SVP of Digital Customer Success at Salesforce, added. “And then we look at the actual conversation. It was terrible. People were frustrated. They wanted to go to a human. The agent kept trying – it was just getting in the way.”
In an exclusive interview with Salesforce Ben, Slowey expanded on this, explaining the way Salesforce went back to the drawing board and reconsidered what agent resolution actually looked like.
The resolution rate is now measured through this process:
- Looking at the number of people landing on the Help portal.
- Look at how many people started a conversation with Agentforce.
- Three flows work as a result. One fires when the conversation is started and then dropped off. The “abandonment rate” used to be 26% – now it’s 8%.
- The second one is hand-off to a human.
- The third is resolution – this is worked out through an additional survey at the end, which prompts the user to answer the question “did we solve the problem?”
“It’s a lot smaller of a sample size, but it gives us a better gauge of where we are,” Slowey explained.
Costs
The cost of Agentforce has long been considered one of the most talked-about issues with Agentforce, and one that still likely remains an issue for many members of the community.
Although Salesforce did change its pricing model to be more flexible earlier this year, last month the CRM giant announced that there would be a 6% increase in pricing for Enterprise and Unlimited Editions across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Field Service, and select Industry Clouds.
It’s easy to see why this kind of announcement comes as quite a blow for many businesses – yes, the new user licences, add-ons, and editions offer increased customization options, and there is a bundle, but at for $125 per user/per month for the add-ons and $550 per user/month for the bundle, businesses will need clear ROI metrics to justify the investment.
Training
It’s no surprise that Salesforce has leant on the capabilities of Trailhead for a lot of their user training, and with the new “Agentblazer Status” roadmap to help guide professionals through their AI journey, as well as free AI certifications until the end of the year, it’s clear to see that a real training effort has been made.
Not only that, but Salesforce has also opened its own AI center in London, dedicated to collaborative, hands-on AI work in the UK, as well as investing $1B in Singapore, $2B in Australia, and $4B in the UK for AI development.
The community has expressed that they want more hands-on learning opportunities with Agentforce, specifically focusing on the more granular details of building as well as the preparation process – hopefully this is something that these investments will go towards.
Community Feedback
Lastly, as aforementioned, many members of the community recently spoke out over their mounting frustrations with Salesforce’s mammoth push for all things Agentforce, so it’s clear that change is needed. Fortunately, Salesforce does appear to be taking on that feedback and pushing for change.
It was recently announced that this year’s flagship conference, Dreamforce, will be much more community-driven, with a new Community Keynote and dedicated area in the Moscone Center for community-oriented sessions, networking, and learning. With any luck, that space will be a place to continue important conversations like this one, and make sure that Salesforce is following along.
Salesforce does pay attention to what the community says, which is why keeping that line of communication open is key.
Final Thoughts
Agentforce has come a long way since its inception, and the progress it has made, as well as the companies it has benefited, is not something to dismiss. However, has it moved from hype to reality? I would argue not yet, but it is certainly getting there.
Salesforce clearly understands that Agentforce has certain weaknesses and is updating the tool as necessary to try and resolve as many of these issues as possible. I don’t believe that Agentforce is at a stage where it is 100% perfect yet, and it likely never will be, but even getting it close to that upper percentage is probably months away rather than years.
This AI tool is already being utilized by many, and as Salesforce continues to update the platform and training, paying attention to feedback, we should see the community grow warmer to Agentforce’s powerful capabilities.
The post Has Agentforce Moved from Hype to Reality? appeared first on Salesforce Ben.
July 25, 2025 at 06:09PM
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