What’s Next in CRM? Major Highlights from Salesforce Dreamforce 2024

Dreamforce 2024: Transforming the Future of Work with Autonomous AI Agents

•Salesforce Expands Partnership with Saks Fifth Avenue

• Salesforce Introduces AI-Powered Service Cloud Innovations to Accelerate Successful Customer and Employee Case Resolutions

• Salesforce Launches Industries AI: 100+ Out-of-the-Box AI Capabilities that Tackle Industry-Specific Pain Points Across 15 Industries

• Salesforce Ventures Expands AI Investment to $1 Billion

The World’s Premier AI Event

Dreamforce is Salesforce’s annual conference and one of the largest technology events of the year. Salesforce Dreamforce 2024 delivered three unforgettable days filled with innovation, inspiration, learning, and excitement at San Fransisco from the 17-19th of September. Attendees witnessed the transformative capabilities of Agentforce and the collaborative potential of humans and AI agents in driving customer success.

Over 45,000 trailblazers from more than 140 countries gathered in San Francisco, while millions more tuned in via Salesforce+. Together, they witnessed Salesforce ushering in a new era of AI with Agentforce—a groundbreaking suite of autonomous AI agents designed to augment employees and manage tasks across service, sales, marketing, and commerce, resulting in unprecedented efficiency and customer satisfaction. Through Agentforce, companies were empowered to enhance their workforce and scale operations on demand with just a few clicks.

This year’s avant-garde announcement: Agentforce

Agentforce agents are equipped to analyse data, make decisions, and take action on tasks such as answering customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, and optimising marketing campaigns. With Agentforce, organisations can effortlessly build, customise, and deploy their own agents for various use cases across multiple industries.

Designed for easy customisation and deployment with clicks rather than code, Agentforce’s out-of-the-box agents can be set up in just minutes. The initial wave of Agentforce included agents for sales, service, marketing, and commerce. For instance, the Service Agent is developed to replace traditional chatbots with AI capable of handling a wide range of service issues without preprogrammed scenarios, thus enhancing customer service efficiency. The Sales Development Representative (SDR) is employed to engage with prospects around the clock, answering questions, managing objections, and scheduling meetings based on CRM and external data, allowing sellers to concentrate on building deeper customer relationships. Furthermore, the Merchandiser is designed to assist eCommerce merchandisers with site setup, goal setting, personalised promotions, product descriptions, and data-driven insights, streamlining daily tasks.

At Dreamforce, Salesforce empowered attendees to build their first AI agents in minutes, live and on-site at the ‘Agentforce Launch Zone.’ Attendees received one-on-one guidance from the Agentforce ‘advance force’ experts to develop their first agent prototype using a cutting-edge, AI-powered Slack app that interfaced with a Large Language Model (LLM), facilitating the creation of an autonomous agent.

‘’Agentforce is the Third Wave of AI, advancing beyond copilots to a new era of intelligent, low-hallucination agents that set a new standard for accuracy and relevance, boosting productivity and customer satisfaction to unprecedented levels-’’ Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce.

The Indian Era

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff declared that the world is entering an "Indian era," emphasising India's increasing global influence. Benioff stated, “There is no question that we are moving into an incredible moment for India. It’s a very exciting opportunity.”

Benioff voiced confidence in Salesforce’s growing presence in India, where the company employs over 11,000 individuals. He underscored the importance of the Indian operations in both engineering and market engagement, highlighting key clients like the Bajaj Group.

Benioff praised Arundhati Bhattacharya, former SBI Chairperson and current CEO of Salesforce India, attributing the company's growth in the region to her strong leadership. Although he did not reveal specific plans for workforce expansion, Benioff accentuated India’s pivotal role in shaping Salesforce’s future strategy.

Here are some of the key occurrences of the event:

- Keynote presentations delivered by Salesforce executives and industry leaders.

- Breakout sessions on a wide range of Salesforce topics, including product demos and best practices.

- Networking opportunities for Salesforce users from around the world.

- A fun and festive atmosphere with live music, food, and drinks.

Here are the key takeaways from the event, highlighting the most impactful trends and technologies:

1. Salesforce’s Transition from Suite to Unified Platform is Complete

Salesforce, renowned for its Customer 360 apps, has completed its transformation from offering standalone applications to delivering a fully integrated platform. In recent years, Salesforce has re-engineered its entire suite, including acquired apps, to form a cohesive platform where all components work seamlessly together.

Looking ahead, Salesforce's focus will shift to selling this unified platform rather than individual Customer 360 apps. As CEO Marc Benioff emphasised in his keynote, the platform—updated three times annually—is now the strategic core of Salesforce's business.

This platform foundation allows Salesforce to scale its CRM applications efficiently, as well as Slack and Tableau while enabling innovations like Agentforce. Additionally, the platform drives cross-CRM advancements, supports streamlined data sharing across functions, and maximises multi-cloud capabilities.

Salesforce’s long-term goal is to leverage the power of its platform to solidify its leadership in CRM, positioning itself as the enterprise’s central system while relegating isolated competitors to lesser roles. Among those competitors is ServiceNow, with Benioff comparing Salesforce vs. ServiceNow to McDonald’s vs. Wienerschnitzel, signalling Salesforce’s ambition to surpass ServiceNow with its broader "bigger than CRM" vision.

2. Data Cloud: The Central Pillar of Salesforce’s Unified Platform

Data Cloud is the driving force behind Salesforce’s platform, seamlessly integrating data from across Salesforce Clouds to form a unified customer profile. In addition to internal data consolidation, Data Cloud enriches these profiles with insights from external data lakes and warehouses, supporting industry-leading platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, and IBM mainframes. It also compiles metadata across various teams, offering a holistic view of customer engagement.

As CEO Marc Benioff remarked, “We can take all that data and integrate it into the Customer 360, which has been our vision for the last 25 years.” He showcased this with Agentforce, Salesforce’s latest innovation, built upon Data Cloud’s robust infrastructure. Benioff further emphasised the platform’s new capabilities, including support for unstructured audio and video data, more pre-built connectors for seamless data ingestion, and enhanced governance features to maintain data accuracy.

The key takeaway is that innovations like Agentforce rely on a powerful data engine. Data Cloud not only fuels Salesforce’s autonomous agents but also drives multi-cloud customer experience (CX) innovation, positioning it as the foundation of Salesforce’s future CRM leadership.

3. Accuracy: The Foundation of Salesforce’s AI Vision

After expressing earlier doubts about autonomous agents, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took the stage at Dreamforce to assert that the time for Agentforce is now—thanks to its unparalleled accuracy. Powered by Data Cloud, Agentforce offers one of the most reliable applications of generative AI, overcoming the common issue of AI hallucinations.

Benioff emphasised that Salesforce’s platform, which integrates data, metadata, workflows, business processes, and security models, is what makes its AI agents exceptionally accurate and dependable. “Why are our agents so accurate and reliable? It’s because of the platform,” he explained. This solid foundation enables Salesforce’s AI to surpass other solutions, reducing errors and delivering more consistent results. To reinforce this, Benioff compared Agentforce’s performance to OpenAI on Azure, underscoring the competitive advantage of Salesforce’s platform. He specifically highlighted its relevance to customer service teams, who stand to gain the most from these AI-driven innovations—especially during high-demand periods like the holiday season.

Customer service is often where businesses first adopt AI, as it's seen as less risky than applying AI in areas like sales or marketing. However, high-profile failures of autonomous agents in customer service earlier this year, such as issues faced by DPD and the NYC Government, have made accuracy a crucial factor in building confidence in AI. By prioritising accuracy, Benioff has positioned Salesforce at the forefront of the AI revolution, setting a new standard for precision and dependability as businesses increasingly rely on AI to improve customer experiences.

4. Salesforce Transitions from Einstein Copilot to Agentforce

In a notable shift announced by Marc Benioff, Salesforce has officially moved from Einstein Copilot to Agentforce, declaring that do-it-yourself (DIY) generative AI is no longer a practical choice for businesses. This upgrade is designed to enhance Salesforce customers' access to Agentforce while signalling the end of the copilot era and welcoming the age of autonomous agents. Salesforce aims to distance itself from “DIY science projects” and instead position its agents as trustworthy, enterprise-grade solutions that organisations can confidently deploy.

The transition to Agentforce not only focuses on improving output accuracy but also emphasises ease of implementation, scalability, and security-critical advantages stemming from Salesforce’s integrated platform approach to AI. This was visually highlighted by demonstrating the potential risks associated with DIY generative AI.

Benioff remarked, “You want the ability to deploy this Agentforce capability across everyone important to your company, serving both digital and human workers. We can move beyond chatbots and copilots into this new Agentforce world. It will understand your business, plan, reason, and take action on your behalf.”

To support rapid adoption, Salesforce will introduce over 100 pre-built, industry-specific actions for Agentforce. Additionally, a low-code interface will allow customer experience (CX) teams to customise these actions, fostering greater confidence in the Agentforce offering, even for organisations that have yet to implement the Salesforce platform fully.

5. Slack Reclaims Its Central Role

When Salesforce acquired Slack, it aimed to transform the platform into a “Digital HQ” for businesses. However, progress towards this vision has been gradual, with innovations like Slack Sales Elevate only partially realising Benioff’s goal of making Slack a central operational hub within Salesforce.

Now, Benioff is reinvigorating that vision. “Slack is deeply integrated into Data Cloud, Flow, and our core platform, providing a consistent interface and a unified experience for your entire organisation and Customer 360,” he noted.

With the launch of Agentforce, the potential for a cohesive platform and streamlined interface becomes even more appealing. Users may soon be able to utilise agents within Slack to perform tasks across Customer 360 applications without needing to navigate into each app directly. Beyond task execution, Agentforce within Slack will allow users to interact with cross-CRM data and extract insights directly from the CRM platform, enhancing both user engagement and decision-making.

However, the competitive landscape poses a question: how will this shift impact the stronghold Microsoft Teams has established in the collaboration arena? The effects of these developments remain to be seen. Nonetheless, Slack has now emerged as a significantly more attractive option for enterprises embracing Salesforce's platform vision.

While this landmark event has concluded, the insights and knowledge continue to flow on Salesforce+—available anytime, anywhere, and completely free of charge!