Salesforce is introducing Agentforce Voice, a new capability that provides AI agents with the power of natural-sounding speech, connecting phone interactions directly into Service Cloud.
The new voice feature will work across phone systems, websites, and apps, and is expected to be made widely available on October 21.
What Is Agentforce Voice?
Agentforce Voice interacts with customers with intelligent support from AI agents, integrates with leading telephony providers such as Amazon Connect, Five9, NiCE, and Vonage, and automatically logs every conversation it has.
When calls pass from an agent to a human rep, important context such as case history, purchase data, and tone of voice also comes with it.
Salesforce claims that the goal is to transform voice from a cost center into a fully connected source of insight. Each phone interaction will become searchable data that can train other models, improving the accuracy of responses and reducing handling time.
Some of its other key capabilities include:
- Seamless integration between telephony systems and Service Cloud’s real-time conversational platform.
- AI that understands emotion, nuance, and intent for more natural responses.
- Instant hand-offs between AI and human agents with complete conversational history.
- Automated transcription, logging, and sentiment analysis make up customer records.
- Continuous learning from past interactions to make future conversations smarter.
This launch also puts Salesforce in direct competition with Sierra, the customer-service AI startup founded by former Salesforce co-CEO, Bret Taylor.
Sierra has gained a lot of attention for its end-to-end AI agents that can complete tasks without human intervention, charging customers based on the number of automation interactions.
Salesforce instead measures pricing by the length of conversations or tasks completed – but the addition of lifelike speech and emotional understanding may narrow the feature gap. As Adam Evans, Salesforce EVP, told Axios: “You can have the creativity and fluidity when you want it, or the rigidity, consistency, and scale when you don’t. It’s your choice on a day-to-day basis.”
Per Axios, Salesforce is also developing a hybrid reasoning feature called “Agent Script”, which is now in pilot, and reportedly combines creative AI with rule-based consistency. This may be a feature to look out for ahead of Dreamforce next week.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce may be late to the voice-AI arena, but introducing a voice agent that actually sounds human and responds considerately could prove a powerful differentiator.
All eyes will be on Salesforce’s main keynote next week, where Agentforce Voice is expected to make its debut. The question is: will it deliver the lifelike AI agent Salesforce has reportedly been developing for the past year? Time will tell, but if it does, this could mark an exciting leap forward for the platform.
