Salesforce Rolls Out Agentforce for HR Service to Transform Employee Support

Salesforce have released Agentforce for HR Service to enhance the HR experience for both employees and HR teams.

Agentforce for HR Service offers pre-built, customizable topics (broad task categories for AI agents) and actions (specific tools AI agents use). These features enable employees to self-serve for answers and task completion while allowing HR teams to support more employees and concentrate on complex issues.

Understanding Agentforce for HR Service

According to research conducted by SHRM, 90% of HR professionals feel stretched thin and struggle to meet their organization’s needs. This makes the HR experience more strenuous for employees, who may be wasting valuable time trying to reach HR to no avail.

This is where Salesforce believes AI and Agentforce can play a big role, streamlining the process for both parties. The aim is to mitigate the time spent filing tickets and trying to find company policies in favor of a new conversational AI-driven process.

Agentforce for HR Service uses natural language processing to understand employee questions, tapping into Data Cloud to combine structured data, like profiles, with unstructured content like policies and PDFs. Powered by the Atlas Reasoning Engine, Agentforce delivers accurate answers and takes action to resolve issues fast.

On top of this, Agentforce for HR Service provides 24/7 HR Support, which allows employees to make requests outside of work hours when urgent action is needed.

Kishan Chetan, EVP & GM of Service Cloud, believes Salesforce are “leading the digital labor revolution”, and that we will see a combination of humans and agents in the HR workforce in the next five years.

“We’re bringing Agentforce skills and actions to HR Service so companies can expedite requests and scale employee support when resources are limited – ensuring every employee receives quick, personalized support in the flow of work”, Kishan explained. “This will not only enhance the employee experience, but also boost productivity across stretched HR teams.”

How Does Agentforce for HR Service Help Employees?

Grounded in company data, Agentforce for HR streamlines the process for employees by:

• Providing personalized answers: Tailor responses that are valid to each worker based on their employee data and company policies.
• Tracking employee programs: Allow employees to track programs that have been assigned to them by their manager. This can include tasks like training modules or videos, and also relates to key milestones, like onboarding.
• Managing HR cases: Give employees clear insight into how far along certain HR requests are with their manager. The employee can ask, “What’s the status of my latest case?”, and Agentforce should know exactly what you mean without additional context.
• Updating employee data: Help with changing profile information in HR systems, such as their address or phone number, all with neutral language prompts.
• Managing time off requests: Process employee queries around time off, helping them quickly request, cancel, or view leave balances. This includes floating holidays, sick days, PTO, parental leave, or any other form of time off.
• Updating direct deposit details: Allow employees to view or edit their direct deposit details without having to log in to another system. A new employee can start a conversation with Agentforce in Slack, for example, to set up their direct deposit, and it will automatically update the record.
• Submitting and tracking expenses: Automate expense management, freeing up another admin task for the employee to do. Agentforce for HR streamlines expense management by verifying reimbursement eligibility against company policies, providing updates on report status, and enabling users to create and submit expense reports.
• Escalating to a human HR rep: Acting quickly when a request is highly complex or personal, transferring the conversation to a human HR representative of the HR portal.

How Does Agentforce for HR Service Help HR Teams?

Agentforce for HR Service will be embedded in the HR Service Console, helping HR teams by:

• Generating recommended responses: Offers recommended replies and summaries based on conversational context and company knowledge base. For example, if an employee submits a non-compliant reimbursement, Agentforce can summarize the company policy for you and draft a response to send back to the employee.
• Unifying employee data: Works alongside Mulesoft to pull employee data from HR systems, making it easier to view and update employee details without needing to leave the HR console.

Agentforce for HR Service at Salesforce

Salesforce itself is the first to put Agentforce for HR Service into action. Employees have interacted with Agentforce through Slack and the Employee Portal to get help on everything from well-being reimbursements to open enrollment questions and relocation guidance, all with minimal HR team involvement.

So far, the results speak for themselves:

• Nearly 10 million employee searches managed through the Employee Portal
• 96% of those resolved without HR intervention
• A new HR Service Console that puts all employee data, engagement history, and AI-powered case resolution tools in one place

Nathalie Scardino, Salesforce’s Chief People Officer, calls this the future of work: “As customer zero of Agentforce, our teams are working alongside agents daily, which has led to increased productivity and empowered our employees to focus on more impactful work.”

And it’s not just Salesforce. Other organizations like Indeed are already using Agentforce to streamline hiring and other HR tasks.

According to Rebecca Wettemann, Principal Analyst at Valoir: “HR, like every other business unit, is being asked to do more with less. Agentforce will allow HR teams to scale support… and employees will get time back in their day because their cases are getting resolved more quickly.”

Final Thoughts

With the launch of Agentforce for HR Service, Salesforce is bringing AI-powered support directly into the flow of work, which will free up HR teams, empower employees, and unlock new levels of productivity.

Agentforce for HR Service is available now on the Agentforce Platform, Employee Portal, and HR Service Console. Additional features, including Agentforce for HR Service topics and actions, will be released on the Employee Portal and Slack in June.