Salesforce launches agentic AI for field workers
Image: Salesforce
US software company Salesforce is introducing agentic AI for scheduling, reporting and troubleshooting for field service workers.
Agentic AI – a form of AI designed to make decisions and perform tasks – forms part of Salesforce’s ‘Agentforce for field service’ package, with AI agents aimed to eliminate scheduling bottlenecks and tackle routine time consuming tasks.
Agentforce is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing data systems and user interfaces, operating autonomously to schedule appointments, assist with filling schedule gaps, troubleshoot in real time and summarise job reports.
With audio playback and natural language voice commands, field technicians should be able to interact with Agentforce and consume information while on the move and thereby boost productivity, safety and response times.
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“Agentforce for Field Service redefines how work gets done in critical industries like manufacturing, telecommunications, utilities and consumer home services,” says Taksina Eammano, EVP and GM of Field Service at Salesforce.
“Powered by data and intelligence, this is a massive leap in AI innovation that tackles the inefficiencies that plague field workers today, solving the pain of back-and-forth scheduling while giving field reps the power to make context-aware decisions and handle real-world nuances more effectively.”
Salesforce reports a survey it has undertaken, finding that almost a third of the average technician’s working hours in the US are spent on information gathering such as job briefs, customer documentation, permit filings and other administrative tasks, which is also slightly more than the time they spend actually delivering or performing services – a balance that is stated even worse in the energy and utilities and telecommunications sectors.
As such the majority report working overtime on administrative tasks with many of them feeling burned out on a monthly basis.
Focussing in, onsite service appointments take an average of 17 minutes to schedule, 15 minutes to change and 12 minutes to cancel. With Agentforce users should be able to interact on demand 24/7 to schedule, reschedule or cancel service appointments in less than 5 minutes.
The agentic AI technology uses pre-built topics and actions and is underpinned by Salesforce’s hyperscale data engine that unifies structured and unstructured data, including customer’s service history, external product catalogues and connected asset insights to ground responses in accurate and timely information.
This raw data and metadata is then converted via a ‘reasoning engine’ into intelligent actions.
As an example of an application Salesforce cites asset management. When an item of equipment hits a usage or performance threshold, Agentforce can automatically notify the customer via SMS and offer a service appointment, and work with them using natural human language to find the best day and time for the repair.
Another example is utilities lineworkers wrapping up jobs more efficiently by tasking Agentforce with generating summaries of their work orders based on the forms completed by the technician and the troubleshooting steps taken onsite.
AJ Bagwell, Chief Technology Officer of Texas-based water solutions provider Axis Water Technologies, is quoted as saying that with Agentforce, the training time for new hires can be reduced from two months to about three weeks.
“Additionally, we’re reducing truck rolls by 20% and helping our technicians get out the door and start work 35 minutes faster each day by being more prepared and having the right parts.”
