An AI agent that keeps Salesforce up to date
Salespeople are left at the end of the day with the call that was never logged in Salesforce, the opportunity with a close date three months gone and the web lead nobody answered. An AI agent can take that upkeep on, and your people keep the deals.
Your people's meeting notes, accounts and opportunities, web-to-lead records and the week's pipeline figures.
Meeting notes and next steps on the account and opportunity, completed lead fields and owners, owners' answers on stale opportunities, and the draft pipeline report.
What Salesforce is and who runs it
Salesforce is customer relationship management software made by Salesforce, which has offered CRM in the cloud since 1999. A business uses it to hold its leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities, and to see what its sales and service teams are working on.
Day to day it belongs to the sales director or a sales operations manager, with a Salesforce administrator who looks after fields, page layouts and permissions. In a smaller firm that administrator is often an account manager who learned it on the job.
Salesforce upkeep an AI agent can take on
Meetings logged against the opportunity
After a client meeting the agent writes the note, the contacts who attended and the next step onto the right account and opportunity, from the notes your people already keep. Where it cannot tell which opportunity is meant, it asks.
New leads answered and filled in
A web-to-lead record often arrives with a name and an email address and little else. The agent replies with your questions, completes the lead's fields from the answers and assigns it to an owner by your rules. Converting the lead stays with a salesperson.
Stale opportunities raised
Each week the agent lists the open opportunities with a close date in the past, no activity for a month or no next step, and asks each owner what has changed. It records the answer. Moving a stage or an amount waits for the owner.
The pipeline report drafted
The agent draws the week's figures from your opportunities by stage and owner, sets them beside last week's and drafts the commentary for the sales meeting. What the figures mean for the forecast is your sales director's call.
Roles that work in Salesforce
Data entry and CRM upkeep
Keeps contacts, accounts and opportunities complete after each meeting. Merges and deletions wait for a person.
Lead response and qualification
Answers each new lead with your questions and fills in the record before a salesperson picks it up.
Sales follow-up
Raises each open opportunity with its owner on the day the next step falls due.
Management reporting
Drafts the weekly pipeline report from your opportunities, for your sales director to read and correct.
How the connection is set up
Salesforce publishes several ways in for other software, among them a REST API, a SOAP API and a Bulk API. An app is authorised through OAuth 2.0 and works as a user your Salesforce administrator has set up with API access. Which of the routes Salesforce publishes is used is agreed with you first.
Salesforce says API access depends on the edition you hold, and it caps the calls an org can make in a rolling 24 hours. The agent's user is given only the objects and fields its role needs.
Questions owners ask
Does our edition of Salesforce allow this?
It depends on the edition you hold. Salesforce includes API access in some editions and not in others, so it is not something to assume. Which edition you hold, and whether API access is switched on, is checked with you before a role is agreed.
Will the agent change deal stages or amounts?
Not on its own. It logs activity, completes fields and raises what looks out of date. A change to a stage, an amount or a close date is the opportunity owner's decision, and the agent makes it only when the owner has confirmed it.
We already pay for Agentforce. Why add an agent?
Agentforce is Salesforce's own AI: agents you set up inside Salesforce, which can qualify inbound leads, update opportunities and book meetings, and may be all you need. An Agent Resource, more staff member than tool, has its role agreed with you and managed for you, across your mailbox, diary and other systems.
Who decides what the agent can see in Salesforce?
Your Salesforce administrator. The agent works as a user with its own profile and permissions, so it sees the objects and fields you allow, and each record shows that user as the one who last changed it.