Salesforce: We’re in the third wave of AI

Salesforce has claimed the market is approaching the third wave of AI as it kicked off its first Agentforce World Tour in Sydney on 15 October. 

The event marked the introduction of Agentforce, which was revealed in September offering a suite of autonomous AI agents, helping businesses transform tasks across every role, workflow, and industry. Agentforce will soon become generally available in the market.

Organisations can build, tailor, and deploy AI agents using pre-built templates, making the integration seamless and scalable.

This creates a digital workforce capable of analysing data, making decisions, and executing tasks like answering customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, and optimising marketing campaigns.

Salesforce A/NZ EVP and general manager Frank Fillmann said in 2023 it rewrote all of its products to be AI-first and this year, it had rewritten products be agent-first, in what he described as the ‘third wave of AI’.

“We are now in the third wave, which is all about autonomous agents that work alongside as an extension of our team,” he said. “Think of agents as an upgrade to Copilot.

“We are ushering in a new era. Abandon your DIY efforts, leverage your Salesforce investment, leverage your data lake investments, onboard and deploy agents quickly and easily that work 24/7 for your team and your customer.”

Fillmann reiterated Salesforces’ commitment to skilling up the workforce and the importance of its ecosystem. Implementation partners include the likes of Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte Digital, IBM, PwC and Slalom.

This year, Salesforce launched its global AI skills initiative, offering premium AI courses for free through its Trailhead resources that will be available up until the tail end of 2025.

“We have a pilot of the global AI learning initiative at the Salesforce Tower in Sydney and in the last six weeks, we\’ve trained more than 300 people. We\’re just getting started,” Fillmann said. 

According to an IDC study, the Salesforce economy – including its networking of partners – will generate more than US$2 trillion in net new business revenue between 2022 and 2028.

Fillmann broke this down to Australian numbers, indicating it was going to drive US$21 billion of economic benefit, creating more than 245,000 jobs within its own ecosystem. 

“Hence, we are committed to investing in our community, bridging the skills gap and scaling up the workforce,” he said. 

The customer experience journey

Medibank journey orchestration lead Leah Cassidy and Medibank head of marketing and technology orchestration Jon Goh, emphasised the importance of Salesforce Data Cloud in providing a unified view of customer interactions and how the seamless integration with existing systems facilitated real-time customer engagement and improved marketing efficiency.

“Marketing data is the heart of our practice and it is our most tangible touch point to our customers,” Goh said. 

“Data Cloud is the centre of our marketing stack and engine room. Our marketers are able to see that single view of marketing of how we execute to customers and then orchestrate all our customer experiences from that single record. 

Cassidy explained that while it was still focused on delivering campaigns, Data Cloud was allowing Medibank to shift its focus to customer experience. As the organisation embarked on implementing Data Cloud, it selected key areas that were set to drive high business value, rather than undertake a monolithic transformation.

“As marketers, we understood the customer problems and some of the key metrics that were driving business performance,” she said. “We anchored our Data Cloud implementation around those.”

Cassidy explained the implementation took place around key critical points of customer content, providing the ability to capture ‘quick and easy’ wins resulting in responding to customers in ‘near real-time’ and targeting customers that were showing intent in other product areas.

“They were quick and easy wins, they weren\’t groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination, but really critical points of customer content,\” she said.