Salesforce Launches Agentforce for HR Service to Make Employee Support Easy for Everyone

Agentforce for HR Service brings the power of AI agents and Service Cloud’s employee service capabilities to human resources (HR), empowering employees to get personalized answers to HR-related questions and take action on their own, freeing overwhelmed HR teams to focus on more strategic work

Salesforce’s HR team sees a 96% self-service resolution rate with Agentforce for HR Service and the Employee Portal, which also help HR reps resolve employee cases faster with AI-generated responses

Salesforce is providing out-of-the-box capabilities that enable employees to easily update their employee profile, manage PTO requests, and change direct deposit details simply by having a conversation with an AI agent — from Slack or their Employee Portal

Employees expect easy, efficient HR experiences that allow them to focus on the work they were hired to do. However, navigating HR support often feels like a frustrating maze. Employees waste valuable time jumping between systems and contacting HR to complete simple tasks, like submitting PTO requests. This is especially challenging when 90% of HR professionals are already stretched thin. AI agents offer a lifeline — in fact, once fully implemented, Chief Human Resource Officers expect an average employee productivity gain of 30% and a 19% reduction in labor costs.

That’s why Salesforce today announced Agentforce for HR Service, a new set of AI-powered capabilities embedded directly into HR Service, an employee service solution that includes both an Employee Portal and HR Service Console for HR teams. Agentforce for HR Service includes a new suite of out-of-the-box topics – broad categories of tasks an AI agent can perform — and actions – specific steps or tools the AI agent uses to complete those tasks. These customizable topics and actions empower employees to get answers and take action on their own and work alongside HR teams so they can scale support to more employees and focus on complex problem solving. 

With Agentforce for HR Service, employees can perform common HR support tasks conversationally — right where they spend most of their time, inside Slack or their Employee Portal — without needing to file tickets, dig through policy documents, or swivel chair to multiple systems. This AI agent is grounded in company data, knowledge articles, and policies, and integrates with leading Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) and Human Capital Management (HCM) systems so employees can:

• Get personalized answers: Agentforce tailors its answers to each worker based on employee data and company policies. For example, if an employee asks, “Am I eligible for a Gold corporate card?” Agentforce can determine their eligibility based on the role and location in their employee profile and the corporate card policy that’s housed in their knowledge base. 
• Track employee programs: Agentforce empowers employees to easily track employee programs that are assigned by their manager. These programs are tailored to each employee’s journey and can include tasks like videos, training modules, and forms related to key milestones, like onboarding and parental leave. Agentforce ensures a smooth transition, keeping employees informed of their progress and highlighting pending and overdue items to prevent missed deadlines.
• Manage HR cases: Agentforce makes it easy for employees to track and log HR cases for special requests, like leave of absences and payroll discrepancies. When an employee asks Agentforce “what’s the status of my latest case?” Agentforce knows exactly which case to review, even without additional context, and will respond conversationally with an update.
• Update employee details: With Agentforce, employees can update their employee profile information in HR systems using natural language. For example, employees can quickly update their address, phone number, or last name with Agentforce taking action on their behalf. Employees can now complete profile changes in seconds, right in the flow of work. 
• Manage time off requests: Using Agentforce, employees can quickly request, cancel, or view leave balances, whether that’s floating holidays, sick days, PTO, parental leave or other forms of time off, without dealing with cumbersome workflows or policy documents. Agentforce uses natural language to answer leave questions from the knowledge base, ensures requests comply with company policy, and updates the requests in the HR system.
• Update direct deposit details: With Agentforce, employees can easily view or edit their direct deposit details anytime without needing to log into a separate system. For example, a new employee can quickly set up their direct deposit by sharing details with Agentforce in Slack and the agent will automatically update the record.
• Submit and track expenses: Agentforce automates expense management so employees have one less administrative task to do. It validates reimbursement eligibility based on ‌corporate policies, answers questions about report status, and can create and submit expense reports, all within the same interaction.
• Escalate to a human HR rep: If an inquiry is highly complex or highly personal, Agentforce will seamlessly transfer the conversation to a human HR representative using the HR Service Console. For example, if an employee is experiencing a loss, Agentforce can escalate it to the HR team if it detects language or sentiment related to “bereavement” so the HR rep can provide a deeper level of empathy and care. 

And because Agentforce is now embedded within the HR Service Console, where HR reps manage employee cases, HR teams can: 

• Generate responses: Agentforce generates recommended replies and summaries in real time based on the context of the conversation and the company knowledge base. For example, if an employee submits a non-compliant education reimbursement, Agentforce can summarize the policy for the HR rep, draft a response to the employee, and submit an automated approval request to the manager once compliance is reached.
• Unify employee data: A prebuilt Mulesoft integration pulls employee data from HR systems, making it easy to view and update employee details without leaving the HR Service Console. This ensures that HR teams and Agentforce have the context they need to provide personalized recommendations to employees and swift support.

Agentforce for HR Service uses AI and natural language processing to understand a question’s intent. Data Cloud then unifies structured employee data, like the employee profile, with unstructured data, such as policy documents, company knowledge, and PDFs. This comprehensive data foundation grounds Agentforce so it provides accurate responses to employee inquiries. The Atlas Reasoning Engine, the “brain” behind Agentforce, then analyzes this unified information and executes the relevant action to quickly resolve employee issues. 

Salesforce perspective: “Eight in ten HR chiefs say the workforce will be made up of humans and agents in the next five years. Salesforce is leading this digital labor revolution across industries, and now, 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. This will not only enhance the employee experience but also boost productivity across stretched HR teams.” – Kishan Chetan, EVP & GM, Service Cloud

The Salesforce HR team is Agentforce for HR Service’s first customer and finds success using: 

• Agentforce for HR Service in Slack and the Employee Portal to help employees with everything from understanding which programs are eligible for their wellbeing reimbursement, to providing support during open enrollment, to guiding employees through the relocation process — giving employees clarity on qualification while increasing HR team efficiency. 
• The Employee Portal with Agentforce to manage nearly 10 million searches, resolving 96% of employee inquiries without HR team intervention.
• The HR Service Console to provide a comprehensive view of employee data, engagement history, and case details. With Agentforce embedded in the console, Salesforce’s HR team can quickly search, summarize, respond to, and close cases with AI assistance.

Salesforce Customer Zero perspective: “The future of work is humans and agents working together. We are leading our customers into the future by demonstrating how to leverage Agentforce to unlock an era of unlimited potential,” said Nathalie Scardino, President and Chief People Officer at Salesforce. “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.”

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Analyst perspective: “HR, like every other business unit, is being asked to do more with less. Agentforce with HR Service will allow HR teams to scale support by ensuring HR specialists have all the employee data and case information in one place. Employees will get time back in their day to focus on their day job because their cases are getting resolved more quickly and they can self-serve through an AI-powered employee portal, driving greater productivity within and beyond HR.” – Rebecca Wettemann, Principal Analyst, Valoir