Salesforce has introduced Agentforce to Salesforce Help – but spoiler alert: it delivers mixed results. Marc Benioff took to LinkedIn to announce the launch, declaring, “The future of customer support and service is here!” He followed up by sharing, “At Salesforce, we pride ourselves on being Customer Zero for all of our products. So I’m excited to share that #Agentforce is now live on help.salesforce.com.”
After putting Agentforce through its paces, I can’t help but question whether it was truly ready for its public debut. It feels like a bit more refinement might have been in order before rolling it out to us, the customers. Here’s what I discovered when I tested Agentforce on Salesforce Help…
Ask Agentforce
I logged into my Trailhead account as Marc mentioned users should “log in for personalized insights tailored to you”.
The new Ask Agentforce interface is nice enough and easy to access via the Ask Agentforce tab.
You don’t have to remain in this tab; however, Agentforce will appear as a pop-up if you move to a different screen, such as a Help article. This is useful for someone like me who enjoys having multiple tabs open.
Use Case 1: How Do I Reset My Password?
For my first test, I took inspiration from the Ask Agentforce page, where it suggested I ask questions like, “How do I reset my password?” Nice and easy, I assumed. What could possibly go wrong?
Asking, “How do I reset my password”, returned instructions for API Community Manager (ACM), Marketing Cloud Engagement, Anypoint Platform, and B2C Commerce, but not for the core platform, such as Sales Cloud or Service Cloud. This seems like a really bizarre output, considering most customers will be using core clouds.
You could say it’s a user error, as I didn’t specify what product or cloud I wanted to reset my password for, but I’m surprised the agent didn’t clarify or at least offer me the instructions for Sales Cloud.
I tried again, this time specifying I wanted help to reset my password as a Sales Cloud user. It took approximately 12 seconds to respond and gave me instructions to reset my password from within Salesforce and also from the login screen.
Verdict: Despite the first response being bizarrely useless, with a bit more prompting, the response was very good. The experience was fine for me as a Salesforce professional, but if I was a user (not an admin), the initial response would have been enough for me to never use Agentforce again.
Score: 5/10
Use Case 2: How Do I Give Agentforce Feedback?
My initial use case got me thinking it would be useful to give Agentforce feedback on its answers. How can I advise the agent that its initial response wasn’t right or that its second response after more instructions was great?
There’s no obvious way to give the agent feedback – I was expecting to see a thumbs-up/thumbs-down type of functionality. So, I asked Agentforce, “How can I give you feedback on the correct answer?”
It gave me a response related to Chatter Questions.
I think my prompt could have been worded better, but it seems clear that there is no option to give feedback on a response, so I’ve given up.
Verdict: Unimpressed that I can’t give the agent feedback on its response to help it improve in the future.
Score: 0/10
Use Case 3: How Much Does Agentforce Cost?
Everyone is very excited about Agentforce but there is also a lot of confusion about the cost. Agentforce is done based on the consumption of conversations, but the difference between an internal conversation via Copilot or an external conversation using a Service or Sales Agent is unclear – plus, no one seems entirely sure about what constitutes a conversation…
I decided to ask Agentforce, “How Much Does Agentforce Cost?” The agent gave me a standard response that “Agentforce Service Agent pricing starts at $2 USD per conversation.”
It’s curious that the agent specified Agentforce Service Agent, despite my query being about Agentforce in general.
Since the response was fairly light on detail, I asked the agent to provide a link to its source of information. It returned a response of, “I’m here to help with questions related to customer support. How can I help you today?”.
This response was actually presented to me multiple times during my testing with the agent. It feels like when it gets confused, it defaults to this response.
To give the agent a fair test, I added more detail to my prompt, “I would like a link to any documentation about Agentforce pricing.”
Sadly, the agent advised me that “the specific documentation link for Agentforce pricing isn’t available.” This leaves me wondering: Where has the agent found the $2 USD per conversation information?
Verdict: I still don’t understand Agentforce pricing, and I don’t have links to further information. The mission to get to the bottom of pricing failed.
Score: 0/10
Use Case 4: Write a Validation Rule
Feeling like I wasn’t really giving Agentforce a fair shot, I decided to turn my attention to asking for help with some Salesforce Admin tasks, like creating validation rules. I found some sample opportunity validation rules on Salesforce Help to see if the agent would put forward the same solution.
I asked, “Please write me a validation rule that validates that a custom field called Delivery Date (Delivery_Date__c) is provided if an opportunity has advanced to the Closed Won or Negotiation/Review stage.”
The agent created a good validation rule for me in a few seconds and the suggested solution matched the Salesforce Help article.
Verdict: It’s a win for Agentforce! As long as your instructions are clear, the agent will be able to help you with your validation rules.
Score: 10/10
Use Case 5: Create a Custom Object
Sticking with technical questions, I asked the agent, “How would I create a custom object for my Accounts?”
This was a trick question, designed to assess if the agent would be smart enough to tell me not to create a custom object when a standard object exists.
Sadly, the agent gave me instructions to create a custom object for my accounts. I will say that the instructions were pretty clear, if a little high-level. My concern, however, is that if entry-level Salesforce professionals are using Agentforce and don’t know any better, the agent won’t stop them from making poor choices… like creating a custom account object.
I know better, so I thought I would do another test in this section and ask the agent, “Is it a good idea to create a custom object for accounts when there is a standard object for accounts already?”
I’m pleased to see that the agent offered sensible advice but I had to know the right question to ask. I predict a lot of poor solution design and technical debt in the future if we have less-experienced Salesforce professionals using Agentforce to figure out how to design and build Salesforce platforms.
Verdict: It’s a mixed bag here. If you are aware of best practices then Agentforce can help give you useful instructions on how to set things up. Without the benefit of experience, inexperienced professionals may create technical debt following an agent’s instructions.
Score: 5/10
Use Case 6: What Type of Flow?
Salesforce Flow Builder, whilst super powerful, can also be super confusing. For my next test, I thought I would ask Agentforce to help me.
I asked, “What type of Salesforce Flow do I need to automatically deactivate Salesforce users if they have not logged in to Sales Cloud in 90 days?”
The agent provided some useful high-level steps, and more importantly, Scheduled Flow is the correct answer!
Verdict: I think I’m getting better at writing prompts at this point. With some well-thought-out questions including the relevant details, the agent is able to provide me with some useful instructions.
Score: 8/10
Final Thoughts
As others have said, the response time can be slow, but it’s not bad. Most of my responses were generated in 10-20 seconds.
When I logged in the following day, my previous conversations were gone which was quite annoying as I hadn’t finished taking images of all my use cases! Keep in mind that your conversations will disappear.
When it comes to Salesforce Help, Agentforce shines in specific scenarios. It performs much better when you provide clear and detailed instructions. However, I found its technical guidance to be quite high-level. While this is great for experienced users, it might leave newcomers feeling a bit lost. Personally, I found Agentforce particularly helpful for crafting validation rules – it really stood out there.
That said, I still prefer resources like the Salesforce Answers community or blogs. Advice from real-world experts often includes practical examples, clear instructions, and those helpful ‘gotchas’ that make a big difference when solving problems.
I’m optimistic that Agentforce will continue to improve over time. If you’ve had a particularly successful experience with Agentforce on Salesforce Help, I’d love to hear about it – share your stories in the comments below!
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