On the 3rd of December, Salesforce brought together industry leaders and experts in London for ‘The Heart of Service Summit’. Packed with invaluable insights, the event explored the future of customer service. From thought-provoking talks, hand-on sessions and roadmap information, the day showcased how businesses can transform customer experiences with AI.
Curious to know the highlights and key takeaways? Read on to discover more!
In the numbers
AI is creating a buzz in customer service, and for good reason. But why is this? Here are some of the key statistics from the event that caught my attention.
Customer Experience
- 54% of consumers don’t mind how they communicate with a company, as long as their issue is fixed quickly (Salesforce).
- 81% of consumers would prefer to wait for a live agent rather than interacting with a chatbot; typically around 4-5 minutes (Fast Company)!
- 37% of consumers (44% for Gen Z) are comfortable using AI agents to create more personalised and useful content (Salesforce).
- 61% of customers would prefer self-service for simple use cases (e.g. updating contact details, rescheduling, FAQs, etc) (Salesforce).
Employee Experience
- 80% of agents spend time on low-value tasks (CCW).
- 36% of employees considered leaving their job due to poor technology experiences; 14% actually did (Unleash.ai)!
- 68% of field technician time is spent on administrative tasks (Salesforce).
Return on Investment
- Primary Focus of Generative AI Investments: 38% of respondents are focusing on Customer Experience / Retention (Gartner).
- 10-20% Average Customer Deflection in 1 year; cost savings between $20-40 million (source not located).
Statistics like these clearly highlight the opportunities. Both consumers and employees are expecting smoother, more productive interactions with systems. However, for more complex interactions, consumers value the human touch. This means balancing empathy and efficiency. Alongside this, we must also address common challenges for AI adoption, such as data availability, security, privacy and training needs. If achieved, there is the potential for improvements in customer satisfaction, retention and ultimately, profitability.
Diving deeper into the insights
The event highlighted lessons from Salesforce and customers like Nextgen Group, Secret Escapes, Scottish Water and Simplyhealth on their Agentforce journeys. My key takeaways:
- Have a clear vision. Build with purpose and transparency. Put people first, ensuring your team understands how the solution benefits them and your customers.
- Prioritise outcomes. Start small; focus on a few, high-impact use cases to unlock value fast.
- Tackle challenges. Recognise and address hurdles, such as data security / privacy concerns, team resistance, education, etc.
- Governance matters. View governance as an enabler. Engage the right stakeholders to manage risk and avoid bottlenecks.
- Redistribution (not replacement) of channels and tasks. AI can help shift channels (e.g., telephony to messaging) and help with lower value tasks. This unlocks opportunities for reskilling and more value-added activities.
- From deflection to resolution. Use Agentforce to solve customer issues faster, rather than just redirecting them.
- Protect your business’s identity. Use generative AI to help support, not replace, your brand’s voice and tone.
- Learn and grow. Start now to build experience and prepare for future opportunities.
- Progress, not perfection. Balance risk, accuracy and precision when gauging each use case to move forward pragmatically.
- Testing. Encourage and incentivise your team to test the solution and identify gaps.
For me, this reaffirms the importance of balancing the needs of people, process and technology. Whilst Agentforce is a potentially powerful enabler, your team’s success will depend on ensuring engagement and process alignment. There is also a need to ensure key enablers, such as the availability of data, are also in hand. However, once achieved, it is important to ensure team members feel the benefit and are empowered to provide exceptional service to customers.
Roadmap
The Heart of Service Summit showcased key upcoming updates for Service Cloud and Field Service. Here are some of the key features covered. Bear in mind that all roadmap items are subject to change. Check with Salesforce for the latest updates!
| Feature | Area | Summary | Targeted Release |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentforce Service Planner | Service | Create multi-step plans for agents using case data and your processes. | Pilot Oct ‘24. Targeted Generally Available Jan ‘25. |
| Agentforce Service Agent for Scheduling | Field Service | Use Agentforce to automatically schedule appointments with customers. | Generally Available Dec ‘24. |
| Agentforce Service Agent for Email | Service | Automate email conversations. Escalate to human agents where needed. Inbuilt supervisor monitoring. | Beta Feb ‘25. |
| Asset Service Prediction | Field Service | Proactively predict upcoming asset servicing needs. | Pilot Oct ‘24. Targeted Generally Available Feb ‘25. |
| Bring your Own Contact Centre | Service | Connect Digital and Voice channels from CCaaS Partners (Amazon, Genesys, Vonage, Five9 and B&S (Cisco)). | Generally Available Oct ‘24. |
| Compliance (Service Cloud Agentforce) | Service | Fulfilling additional compliance standards. | SOC (Nov ’24). ISO (Dec ’24). HIPPA (Jan ’25). |
| Customer Experience Intelligence | Service | Centralised view of interactions to analyse sentiment, CSAT and feedback. | Generally Available Nov ‘24. |
| Dispatcher Agent | Field Service | Streamline scheduling and exception handling | Generally Available Oct ’24. |
| Dynamic Data Capture | Field Service | Simplify data capture for field agents with dynamic forms. | Beta Oct ’24. |
| Einstein Article Recommendation | Service | Recommend knowledge articles based on real-time Voice and Messaging Conversations. | Pilot Oct ’24. |
| Employee Service Agent | Service | Enrich support portals with AI support agents leveraging personalised HR data. | Generally Available Oct ’24. |
| Multi-Modal Troubleshooting | Field Service | Agentforce able to respond to image, voice and text. | Pilot Feb ’25. |
| Multi-Language Support (Service Cloud Agentforce) | Service | Support for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese. | Target: Feb ’25. |
| Salesforce Chat Setup | Service | Simplified Salesforce Chat setup. | Target: Feb '25 |
| Service Cloud Platform Enhancements | Service | Autocomplete Case Milestones from Case Fields, Milestone Reporting and Rich-Text in Case Comments. | Generally Available Feb ’25. |
As we can see, there are a lot of AI related features coming up. These are all intended to allow more complex actions to be completed with increasing levels of efficiency.
Getting Started
If these features sound exciting but you’re unsure where to begin, here are three takeaways to consider.
1. Prioritise Quick Wins
Identify areas where small efforts yield significant value. With Agentforce, this will likely involve ‘turnkey’ features, like summarisation or answering common queries. These have the potential to save agent time and improve customer resolution rates, laying the foundations for future features.
2. Go EAST: Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely
Generative AI provides significant potential, but uncertainty and resistance can hinder adoption. Embracing new tools can sometimes require behavioural change, which is where EAST comes in:
- Easy: Remove adoption hurdles for your stakeholders (e.g. provide suitable training).
- Attractive: Ensure benefits are clear and tangible.
- Social: Share achievements and insights to build excitement and engagement.
- Timely: Focus on ‘quick wins’ to build momentum and avoid friction points (e.g., releasing features at a busy time). Act on feedback swiftly.
For more user adoption tips, check out this article.
3. Continuous Improvement
Your first steps into generative AI and Agentforce are the beginning, not the end. As you gain experience, you will almost certainly refine your approach and explore higher-value use cases. Remember, walk before you run. You will then be well placed to observe how things are progressing, reflect and make iterative changes to enhance your team’s usage further.
If you’re looking for inspiration of further use cases, have a look at the slide below.
Summary: Is AI the Pulse of Future Innovation?
The Heart of Service Summit showcased the transformative potential of AI in Service and Field Service. While adopting AI requires adaptation and learning, Agentforce offers tools to ease the transition. Nonetheless, it will take time for the picture to become clear (e.g. emerging best practices, regulatory alignment and technology maturing etc). It is therefore important to start small, secure buy-in and remain nimble. By doing so, you’ll be able to stay at the forefront and keep your fingers on the pulse of future AI innovations.
Until next time, thanks for reading! 🐧
Thank you
SFDC Penguin would like to say thank you to Keerti Yadav for her contributions to this blog post.
Would you like to contribute to SFDC Penguin? Get in touch!
Bonus Penguin Fact 🐧
In the constantly evolving world of AI, it is natural to feel the need for a helping hand. Flop, a baby Humboldt penguin at Dudley Zoo, England, faced a similar challenge! Unable to waddle due to an infection, Flop made headlines. Fortunately, the team stepped in with a custom-made “baby bouncer”. Using this, alongside physiotherapy, Flop can now proudly stand and waddle on her own two webbed feet. Learn more here.
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