AI agents are becoming an integral part of business operations, facilitating both employees and customers. They can answer FAQs, recommend products, execute order-related processes, handle employees' repetitive tasks, and more.
Out of many platforms to build AI agents, many businesses are attracted to Agentforce by Salesforce. This platform provides a powerful tool to build and customize AI agents. However, there are many other easy-to-use alternatives to Agentforce.
Therefore, we have designed this guide to look closely into the capabilities and shortcomings of Salesforce Agentforce and then present its few best alternatives.
What is Salesforce Agentforce?
Agentforce is a state-of-the-art platform introduced by Salesforce in 2024. It allows organizations to design, customize, and deploy autonomous AI agents across a variety of business functions. This innovation marks a significant leap in the integration of artificial intelligence within the Salesforce ecosystem, making it a powerful tool for enhancing operational efficiency and customer experiences.
Agentforce simplifies the process of building AI-driven solutions with low-code and no-code options, enabling businesses to streamline operations across customer service, marketing, sales, and e-commerce. By leveraging Agentforce, companies can:
With Salesforce Agentforce, businesses can:
- Resolve customer enquiries 24/7 across channels autonomously.
- Engage prospects by answering product-related questions, booking meetings, and more.
- Utilize Sales Coach agents for personalized role-plays and sales pitch practice.
- Offer hyper-personalized product recommendations.
- Create and optimize targeted marketing campaigns.
In essence, Salesforce Agentforce empowers businesses to deploy autonomous AI agents that serve both customers and employees around the clock.
Core Features of Agentforce in Salesforce
Agentforce comes equipped with a robust suite of features designed to deliver powerful AI capabilities:
1. Agent Builder
A low-code tool for creating AI agents by:
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Defining conversational topics.
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Providing instructions in natural language.
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Building an action library for custom workflows.
2. Atlas Reasoning Engine
The intelligent core of Agentforce, enabling agents to:
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Understand and respond naturally.
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Adapt to various scenarios with contextually accurate answers.
3. Configurable Agent Templates
Pre-built configurations tailored for industries such as:
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Healthcare, Banking, and Retail.
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Operations, Customer Experience, and IT.
4. Testing Center
A simulation environment that:
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Generates synthetic interactions for performance testing.
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Provides actionable insights for optimizing agent instructions.
5. Task Automation
Automates repetitive tasks such as:
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Scheduling appointments.
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Processing orders.
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Generating reports.
6. Seamless Integration
Agentforce integrates with both Salesforce-native apps and third-party systems, ensuring compatibility with existing workflows.
Why Consider an Agentforce Alternative?
Agentforce seems like a complete tool for building and customizing AI agents. However, like other tools, it does have a few limitations or challenges that users face.
Limitations of Salesforce Agentforce
While Agentforce is a powerful platform, it’s not without challenges:
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Steep Learning Curve: Implementing and mastering the tool can be complex.
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Performance Issues: Reports of slow load times and occasional unresponsive features.
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Limited Customization: Some advanced customization features may not be supported.
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Integration Challenges: Issues with third-party integrations causing data sync errors.
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High Costs: The overall cost of ownership may be prohibitive for smaller businesses.
For these reasons, businesses may consider exploring alternatives that better fit their specific needs.
Factor to Consider for Agentforce Alternatives
If you feel like Salesforce Agentforce is not the ideal tool for you, consider the below factors to find its best alternative:
- User Interface: It should offer an easy-to-use interface to build, customize, and deploy an AI agent.
- Feature Set: It should provide all the key features you need, such as customer support, sales automation, marketing, etc.
- Smooth Integration: Check its integration capabilities with your existing systems/tools. It should also offer smooth integration.
- Customization Options: Offer customization options to align the agent with business requirements.
- Cost: The overall cost should be reasonable and not break the bank.
- User Reviews: It should have a solid reputation in the market with positive reviews from existing users.
Based on the above factors, you can shortlist a few of the best Agentforce alternatives and then choose the one that best suits you.
Top 6 Alternatives to Agentforce
You can find dozens of AI agent tools that can help build and deploy agents across your business processes. However, it requires a lot of time to find the best one.
To save the hassle, we have handpicked the six best alternatives to Agentforce that are exceptional in both features and performance.
1. GPTBots.ai – Enterprise AI Agent
GPTBot is an enterprise AI agent and the most advanced alternative to Agentforce. It provides a wide range of AI solutions for enterprises, helping them implement AI agents across customer support, sales, marketing, data insights, and more. It helps automate 90% of customer issues, achieve 300% lead growth, automate 80% of SDR tasks, and more.
GPTBots.ai helps businesses leverage AI for both employees and customers. For example, businesses can use it to create an AI agent to handle customer support or assist employees in writing marketing content or analyzing data. Moreover, it can integrate an AI agent with your preferred channels, such as your website, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Zapier, etc.
The key features of GPTBots.ai include:
- Enterprise-level AI agent to automate 90% of customer issues and achieve 300% lead growth.
- Make enterprise knowledge accessible to all with the AI Enterprise Search feature.
- Wide AI agent integration across WhatsApp, Intercom, Telegram, Messenger, etc.
- AI assistance for sales and marketing teams in product recommendation, writing ad copy, analyzing data, and more.
- Complete AI agent customization to match the brand tone and style.
- Comprehensive AI analytics and reporting.
In short, GPTBots.ai is a feature-packed, enterprise-grade AI agent that can automate and modernize business operations across various sectors.
Why Choose GPTBots.ai?
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Achieves 300% lead growth through targeted automation.
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Automates 80% of sales development representative (SDR) tasks.
2. ControlHippo – Omnichannel Communication
ControlHippo is an omnichannel communication platform that offers simplified communication by integrating popular messaging apps into a single inbox. It incorporates AI chat assistant that help agents respond to customer queries quickly by getting AI smart replies. The AI dives deep into the knowledge base and provides agents the most relevant answer.
ControlHippo also supports creating a chatbot from scratch. Its no-code platform helps build a personalized chatbot that can assist customers 24/7. Besides that, it also offers analytics reports about customer interactions to make informed decisions.
The key features of ControlHippo include:
- Single inbox to connect with customers across multiple messaging channels, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, email, etc.
- Seamless omnichannel integration with CRM.
- AI chat assistant for support team.
- No-code AI chatbot builder.
- Insightful analytics report.
- Workflow automation, such as automated updates, launch of targeted campaigns based on triggers, etc.
3. Zendesk – Customer Service Leader
Zendesk is a great Agentforce Salesforce alternative. It is a cloud-based customer service platform that streamlines workflows and improves customer engagement. It offers a wide range of tools, including helpdesk, email marketing, sales, live chat, customer/employee engagement, and more.
Zendesk offers super-intelligent AI agents that can automate 80%+ interactions. It can deploy across various communication channels and can automate the resolution of customers' issues. Moreover, it provides insights into customer trends and more to refine operations effectively.
The key features of Zendesk include:
- Centralized ticketing system.
- Unified multi-channel support.
- Automate routine tasks, like ticket assignments, follow-up reminders, etc.
- AI agents to automate the resolution of 80%+ customer queries.
- Powerful reporting and analytics.
- Smooth customization and scalability.
4. Freshdesk - Unified Customer Support
Freshdesk is a web-based customer engagement solution. It empowers organizations to deliver exceptional customer experiences by offering advanced ticketing, built-in AI, and automation. It provides a smarter ticketing solution that can categorize, prioritize, and assign tickets efficiently. It also offers a unified agent workspace through which agents can better focus on issues and provide personalized support.
Freshdesk now also offers AI-powered, omnichannel customer service software called Freshdesk Omni. This AI agent can integrate across all your communication channels and respond to customer queries in 25+ languages. In addition, it also provides AI-powered insights.
The key features of Freshdesk include:
- Centralized ticket management from multiple channels.
- Self-service portal for customers.
- Automate repetitive tasks, such as ticket assignments, status updates, etc.
- AI agent to automate query resolution.
- Robust analytics tools.
- Integrates the ticketing solution with third-party tools, including MS Teams, Slack, Shopify, etc.
5. ChatBot – Visual Bot Builder
ChatBot is your Agentforce alternative if your focus is to build and integrate an AI bot. This web-based tool offers a visual builder to design the chatbot flow. It allows you to build a chatbot for customer support, sales, and marketing without any coding.
ChatBot also offers predesigned templates to handle specific chatbot skills, like offering discounts, suggesting products, and more. Moreover, it allows you to integrate the AI chatbot on multiple channels, such as website, WhatsApp, Messenger, Slack, etc.
The key features of ChatBot include:
- Visual chatbot builder.
- Support chatbot building for customer support, sales, marketing, and more.
- Smooth chatbot training with corporate knowledge base uploaded through PDFs, spreadsheets, websites, etc.
- Integration with multiple channels.
- Insightful analytics.
6. Intercom: AI-First Customer Support
Intercom is another trusted Agentforce Salesforce alternative. It is an AI-first customer service solution that includes omnichannel support capabilities, live chat widgets, and more.
Intercom has recently introduced its latest generation of AI agent called Intercom Fin 2 that works like a human agent. This AI agent can offer human-like, personalized answers to queries and resolve almost 82% of the support volume. It can speak in your tone of voice and personalize every interaction. It can also deliver targeted and scheduled messages to customers based on region, channel, etc.
The key features of Intercom are as follows:
- Integrate communication across various channels (omnichannel support).
- Customizable live chat widgets.
- Self-service help center.
- Advanced AI Agent (Fin 2) to handle customer support, marketing, and sales.
- Automated workflows for repetitive tasks.
- Useful analytics and reporting.
- Integration with 300+ third-party apps.
Conclusion
Agentforce has quickly become a useful toolkit in the Salesforce ecosystem. However, its steep learning curve, slow loading, and other concerns hinder the experience. Therefore, the above-discussed Agentforce alternatives are the best picks for a more enhanced AI agent experience.
Out of all of them, GPTBots.ai stands out as the most premium solution due to its enterprise-level features, high customization, and wide integration options. So, try out GPTBots.ai and optimize your business operations by deploying reliable AI agents.
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