Reimagine Work With the New AI Employee Service Agent

If your business seems to be pulling you in a hundred directions, it’s actually closer to 991.

According to the Connectivity Benchmark report, the average enterprise uses 991 different applications, and 75% of IT organizations struggle to integrate data insights into those user experiences. This requires users to coordinate across multiple systems, a tedious process that creates poor employee experiences and can lead to misleading business decisions due to fragmented information.  

Our newly expanded strategic partnership with Workday focuses on improving employee experiences by connecting data and, more importantly, empowering your team with an AI employee service agent. Now AI agents and humans can collaborate together, within Workday, within Salesforce, and also within Slack. Our shared goals are to enhance productivity, improve decision-making, and simplify business operations, all within the flow of everyday work. Together, we are bringing the future of work to our joint customers today.

Introducing an agent to improve employee experiences

We are pioneering a new era in enterprise software, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to redefine workplace productivity and intelligence. Central to this transformative journey is an advanced AI employee service agent built on our new Agentforce Platform. We’re moving beyond traditional tools and chatbots to something far more dynamic and intelligent.

These agents are not like chatbots of the past. They are sophisticated and context-aware to manage complex tasks across various functions such as HR, IT, and finance, as well as sales, marketing, and customer service. Whether it’s updating benefits, intelligently tracking a sales lead, or managing expense reports, the AI employee service agent will offer a streamlined, conversational interface that simplifies these important business processes for employees.

Unlike other emerging agents in the marketplace that require escalating to a human, our employee service agent can do a handoff and knowledge transfer back and forth with the human. This creates an integrated experience between humans that is powered and augmented by the AI, and with the AI agents themselves.

Powered by our Salesforce Platform and enriched with cutting-edge large language models (LLMs), the agent extends beyond the capabilities of standard digital assistants.

Key features include:

• Contextual understanding: Interprets the nuances and complexities of your business environment
• Robust task management: Effortlessly handles a diverse range of multi-step tasks across multiple departments
• Natural interaction: Engages with users as intuitively as a human colleague would
• Proactive support: Identifies and addresses user needs, significantly enhancing employee productivity
• Data unification: Integrates all organizational data into a single, accessible source with Salesforce Data Cloud

Empowering partnerships: Unifying your data

We’re thrilled to partner with Workday, our first SaaS partner to join our Zero Copy Data Partner Network. By integrating Workday’s HR and financial data with our unrivaled breadth and depth of customer and CRM data, we offer an unprecedented 360-degree view of your business operations. 

A unified front and back office ensures that data is integrated and harmonized across your organization, giving teams access to critical information in one place, improving employee experiences while simultaneously boosting productivity. 

This will enable new capabilities including:

• Predictive insights leveraging Tableau Pulse to analyze employee attrition risk based on comprehensive employee and performance data, enabling proactive workforce planning
• Comprehensive reports using employee and performance data to inform performance appraisals, development plans, and succession planning
• Precision workforce planning that harmonizes supply forecasts from Workday with demand signals from Salesforce for accurate capacity planning
• Continuous financial planning integrating employee and customer data into rolling forecasts, scenario modeling, and operational analyses
• Intelligent sales enablement that empowers sellers to navigate complex deals by analyzing historical activity and provides targeted coaching recommendations

The key to employee and AI agent effectiveness lies in this shared data foundation, all connected and harmonized through Data Cloud in a trusted way. Together, Data Cloud and our Zero Copy Data Partner Network can eliminate data silos and enable a unified view of business operations. This leads to improved decision-making and paves the way for truly intelligent enterprise-wide systems.

We’re creating a single, comprehensive source of truth for all your business data, streamlining the complexities associated with data management. With Data Cloud, your AI collaborator will be supercharged and fully informed about every aspect of your business.

Meeting you where you are: Seamless integration with Slack

The partnership also delivers new experiences for employees across Workday and Slack, both natively in Slack or Workday and also through AI employee service agents. 

The Workday and Slack integration allows users to leverage the ubiquitous conversational interface, embedded AI, and automation capabilities within Slack to view and collaborate on Workday financial and HR records. These enhancements enable users to manage tasks, view pay details, handle job requisitions, access employee information, and interact with general ledgers directly within Slack.

The advantage of this integration lies in Slack’s ability to preserve conversations across record channels. This means that any discussion or decision-making process is now easily traceable, summarized, and actionable within Slack, Workday, or Salesforce at any time.

In addition, by incorporating AI employee service agent capabilities into Slack, it becomes a powerful command center for employee engagement that delivers increased productivity. This integration allows for seamless access to data and collaborative tools directly within the flow of work, available 24/7. 

AI employee agents: Set to change how we work

Imagine a world where the moment a salesperson accepts a new job, an AI agent prompts their manager to prepare an onboarding plan. After analyzing the new employee’s role, skills, and the team’s performance, the agent immediately sends the leader a recommended onboarding plan. The manager can review the plan, suggest edits, take action, and assign it to the new employee.

On day one, the new employee will receive an automated, streamlined onboarding checklist in Slack. This includes a customized video, team introductions, and a checklist of tasks, such as filling out necessary forms, setting up direct deposit, selecting benefits, and completing required training. The agent tracks progress and sets reminders for outstanding tasks. And everything is tracked in Workday, visible within Slack, and available in the Salesforce Service Cloud unified data store to ensure a comprehensive view of the onboarding progress. 

But the innovation doesn’t stop there. As the new salesperson settles in, they can ask the agent for tailored information about their assigned accounts in their territory, all within the same Slack interface. This integration allows the salesperson to interact dynamically in Slack to fetch detailed insights about each account, like company details, products being considered, and current sales stage. If the employee has a question and the agent cannot find the answer, the agent will proactively offer to open a support ticket to resolve the inquiry efficiently with the appropriate team. 

Throughout the employee’s tenure, the agent continues to serve as an informational tool as well as a proactive coach. Using data from Salesforce, the seller receives personalized sales enablement and performance optimization suggestions based on real-time analysis of their sales pipeline, deal cycles, and accounts. These insights can enable them to close deals faster and secure more wins.

This example shows how an AI employee agent can enhance efficiency from the moment the new hire accepts their offer, throughout their initial onboarding, and continuing throughout their career journey. Einstein AI is there every step of the way, transforming their experience by providing seamless, continuous support and empowerment, directly and continuously impacting success and productivity.

Unleash the potential: The future of work is now

This is more than a product or a partnership. It’s the start of a new era where AI is a trusted colleague in every workplace, data silos are a thing of the past, and every employee has the strategic advantage of comprehensive data at their fingertips. This unified view of the data is all important, as data powers the AI and the AI now powers the employee (and customer experience) of the future. It’s also the beginning of a new movement, where two software leaders are partnering to bring humans and AI closer together to make people and companies more productive and more effective.

As we continue to expand our partnerships and push the boundaries of what unified data and humans and AI working together can achieve, the future of work is not just a concept; it’s a reality. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to lead the charge in transforming the way we work. 

Want to learn more?

Resources

• Learn more about the partnership between Salesforce and Workday
• Explore our Zero Copy Partner Network
• Say hello to Data Cloud
• Get more information on Slack, the AI-powered platform for work
• Discover Workday Everywhere, the existing Workday Slack integration

Any unreleased services or features referenced here are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.