Salesforce just launched a new catch-all platform to build enterprise AI agents

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Salesforce has announced the launch of Agentforce 360, a new combined platform for building, deploying, and managing enterprise AI agents as well as for multimodal and Slack-native agent interaction.

Core to the new platform is a redeveloped Agentforce Builder, through which Salesforce is aiming to make the experience of creating and testing agents as easy as possible.

Workers will now be able to create agents conversationally, using natural language, with Agentforce capable of building agents based on the user’s brief. These agents can then be tested with rapid iterations via a live preview panel and easily exported or connected to existing systems via API or JSON representations.

This pairs with Agent Script, a new portable JSON language to define the behavior of AI agents that was designed with human readability in mind, as well as new configurable controls for Atlas Reasoning Engine, which powers Agentforce.

Salesforce eyes a more streamlined Agentforce

Slack is front and center for Agentforce 360, acting as a user interface for interacting directly with Salesforce apps, agents, and more directly within the communication platform. This includes direct interaction with AI agents, as well as connectors for third-party file storage platforms.

Read more in our dedicated write-up on all the new features coming to Slack.

Separately, Salesforce revealed Agentforce Voice, a new service that powers agents that can realistically interact with customers over the phone.

Enterprises can configure Agentforce Voice agents to follow their brand’s tone of voice, as well as the extent to which agents are allowed to interrupt customers and how long they stay on the phone to give customers a pleasant user experience.

Salesforce Agentforce Voice platform settings options for users.

Built on a new framework developed by Salesforce AI Research known as ‘eVerse’, Agentforce Voice can transcribe and stream audio with low latency so the conversation flows naturally.

Once built, agents can be used for phone calls, web apps, text messages and more, and natively link to contact center as a service (CCaaS) platforms including Amazon Connect, Five9, Genesys, NiCE, and Vonage.

Salesforce doubles down on Agentforce for AI ROI

The CRM giant first launched its agentic AI offering, Agentforce, last September and has since doubled down on its use of the platform for internal as well as customer use.

Srini Tallapragada, president & chief engineering and customer success officer, told assembled media that Salesforce has been using Agentforce for customer service and that agents have already answered 1.8 million customer conversations.

Salesforce has repeatedly underlined the usefulness of Agentforce at both the bottom and top line, cutting across different enterprise segments.

For example, Tallapragada explained that Salesforce is also using Agentforce for lead generation, as a company that hosts huge events and often has customers express interest in its services.

“But even though we are a big company, we are also limited in the number of people – most often what happens is we are not able to follow up on all the leads,” he explained.

“We have an SDR team which only takes the top leads, top one percent, two percent. We leave a lot of leads without follow-up, it's too costly for us. Now Agentforce has an SDR which is doing thousands of leads, following up.”

Agents rooted in enterprise data

One of the standout features of the new platform is Context Indexing, which uses unstructured data from across an enterprise such as PDFs, images, flowcharts, and data tables as context for Agentforce.

The process is automatic and can be controlled by data teams using low-code inputs to analyze and fine-tune the knowledge bases upon which Agentforce draws within their enterprise environment.

Salesforce has added additional structured-level governance to Data 360 alongside the feature, to tie new context indexes to existing organizational security and privacy controls.

Tallapragada explained that without access to the right context enterprise AI pilots fall into “pilot purgatory”, citing a recent MIT study which found that just 5% of enterprise AI pilots generate ROI.

For example, Heathrow Airport's AI agent “Hallie”, which has hit a 90% chat resolution rate without needing human intervention, is grounded in data from its CRM, customer loyalty program, digital bookings, and Wi-Fi data to encompass relevant customer information alongside relevant live data such as boarding times.

The agent is accessible via WhatsApp and is core to Heathrow’s goal of increasing its digital contact efficiency by as much as 40%.

Individual parts of Agentforce 360 will be released on a rolling basis between now and the start of 2026.

Agentforce Voice and Context Indexing will be available this month, while Agent Script, New Agentforce Builder, and Agent Graph will be released in beta in November.

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Rory Bathgate is Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He can also be found co-hosting the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory at rory.bathgate@futurenet.com or on LinkedIn.