Salesforce has unveiled Agentforce for Retail and Retail Cloud with Modern POS as it continues to expand its portfolio of AI-driven solutions.
The first of them, Agentforce for Retail, includes a library of pre-built agent skills so retailers can more easily create agents which automate time-consuming tasks like order management and scheduling appointments.
The second, Retail Cloud with Modern POS, is a cloud-based system which unites online and offline shopping data in a single platform which will give associates a “single entry point to serve shoppers better and faster”, Salesforce says.
This will include mobile POS, Clienteling, Endless Aisle, Mixed Cart and Omnichannel Fulfillment, Inventory Management, and more, the cloud giant said in a statement.
What Is Agentforce for Retail?
Agentforce for Retail is a service which includes new pre-built skills for order management, “guided shopping”, scheduling appointments, and creating loyalty promotions.
Salesforce claims that Agentforce makes trusted, autonomous AI agents “part of every team”, increasing employee capacity across marketing, commerce, merchandising, and store operations with “digital teammates that handle complex tasks with precision, accuracy, and personalization”.
The company said in a statement: “Scalable digital labor will help retailers reach new levels of productivity – responding to customer questions in real-time, modifying orders, issuing returns, managing inventory, scheduling consultations, and even coordinating with shipping providers – all without human intervention.”
The new skills for Agentforce are intended to free up capacity to serve shoppers, drive costs down, and increase shopper conversion while complimenting existing skills already available for merchandisers, marketers, and customer service reps, Salesforce claims.
The new abilities include:
- Commerce Skills for Order Management: This brings order servicing to Agentforce, letting retailers offer self-service order servicing options which cut costs and boost customer loyalty. Customers can conversationally update order information like payment or shipping details, along with handling uneven exchanges and quickly inquiring about order statuses on the channel they prefer.
- Commerce Skills for Guided Shopping: With this, retailers can scale personalized one-to-one concierge services to digital proportions, with new skills for guided shopping. Shoppers can use natural language to get product recommendations from an agent, which is calculated by Agentforce and grounded in shopper, inventory, and operational data. New actions let customers search for products, add items to their cart, and checkout conversationally.
- Field Service Skills for Appointment Scheduling: This can be used to help service representatives facilitate delivery appointment bookings, installations, or consultations using AI-driven scheduling and real-time availability updates.
- Marketing Skills for Loyalty Promotion Creation: Use this to help marketers create and revise loyalty promotions with conversational prompts grounded in shopper, POS, and segmentation data, meaning more personalized email content and subject lines that should increase customer engagement.
What Is Retail Cloud With Modern POS?
Retail Cloud with Modern POS arms retailers with a user-friendly, cloud-based point of sale (POS) which brings online and offline shopping and inventory data together on a single platform, Salesforce says.
This is intended to give associates a single tool to serve their shoppers better and faster.
Its features include:
- Clienteling, Inventory Management, Endless Aisle, and built-in AI powered by real-time shopper and inventory data: This lets associates create and modify shopper profiles which capture shopping history, preferences, and loyalty status. Associates can also view and update inventory across warehouses, supply chain, and commerce channels. They can take action on analytics from omni-channel customer, order, inventory, and sales performance data, and activate AI for voice assistance, analyze potential return fraud, and personalize recommendations for products.
- Mixed Cart and Omni-channel Fulfillment: This gives shoppers more delivery and exchange options while reducing supply chain costs, Salesforce says. An omni-cart architecture lets each line item have its own fulfillment method, offering a single “mixed cart” with shopper fulfillment preferences. These include buy-online-pickup-in-store, buy-online-return-in-store, and omni exchange.
- Mobile-first design and secure offline mode: The cloud giant says this “releases associates from the checkout counter” with offline-capable software enabling checkouts “anywhere shoppers are ready”. Payment transactions are encrypted and stored, ready to be processed when an associate reconnects, Salesforce says, allowing sales to take place during a loss of internet, remote and outdoor activity, or peak shopping activity.
- Built-in Salesforce integrations and no-code CMS: Integrations with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Order Management, and Service Cloud help retailers rapidly access customer data insights, order management, cart synchronization, product information management, and more, according to Salesforce. The cloud-based CMS uses “intuitive” drag-and-drop features to “tailor the interface to each store’s unique brand”, the company says.
When Will They Be Available?
The new AI-driven solutions will be available on the following dates:
- Commerce Skills for Guided Shopping (Product Search, Product Recommendations, Add to Cart, Re-Order, and WISMO) will be generally available in March 2025.
- Commerce Skills for Order Management will be generally available in March 2025.
- Field Service Skills for Appointment Scheduling will be generally available in February 2025.
- Marketing Skills for Loyalty Promotion Creation will be generally available in February 2025.
- Retail Cloud with Modern POS will be generally available “in the first quarter” of 2025.
- Enhanced reasoning and RAG will be generally available in February 2025.
Salesforce says that Retail Cloud and Agentforce increase workforce productivity across front and back-office teams, with AI agents performing best when grounded in accurate, up-to-date customer and operational data.
The cloud giant claims that with Salesforce Modern POS and Data Cloud, retailers can harmonize data and metadata from in-store, commerce, marketing, service, and loyalty systems to give employees and associates a unified, near real-time view of activity across the entire shopper journey.
Retailers can now use Agentforce, with enhanced Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), to retrieve and take action on this data and deliver precise answers, tailored engagements, and upsell opportunities with every shopper interaction.
Summary
Salesforce are releasing Agentforce for Retail and Retail Cloud with Modern POS, intending to use artificial intelligence – namely, of course, their flagship product Agentforce – to increase productivity in the retail sector.
New pre-built skills for Agentforce are meant to drive costs down and complement existing skills for merchandisers, marketers, and customer service reps.
Most of the services offered will be made generally available throughout February and March 2025.