Salesforce introduces new AI agents to automate sales, support tasks

Salesforce Inc. today introduced a series of artificial intelligence agents designed to make sales and technical support teams more productive.

The agents are rolling out alongside a new version of Agentforce Coworker, an automation tool built into several of the company’s cloud services. Most of the new features are generally available today. The rest will launch by year’s end.

Salesforce’s first new agent, Hunter, helps business-to-business salespeople find leads and craft outreach emails. It can also streamline the subsequent phases of the deal-making workflow. Salesforce says Hunter automates tasks such as preparing salespeople for presentations and creating proposals.

Some business-to-business deals take weeks to close. According to Salesforce, Hunter can operate over such large time scales thanks to a module called the long-horizon runtime. It enables the agent to develop long-term work plans and reuse data across chat sessions.

On launch, the runtime is only available in Hunter. Salesforce plans to integrate it into more of the agents that debuted today further down the road.

Hunter is one of three sales-focused AI agents that debuted today. It’s joined by Piper and Carter, which companies can embed in their websites. Piper greets business-to-business prospects and directs them to the most relevant salesperson. Carter, in turn, helps online retailers answer consumers’ product questions. It includes an in-chat checkout widget.