Human employees typically take 6 months to get fully up to speed in an organisation, and Agentforce is similar – it just happens to be a virtual one! Similar to a real employee, agents take time to learn your brand, your expectations, your colleagues and your customers.
However, while hiring a human employee involves interviews, visual, auditory and kinesthetic training, and integration into company culture, onboarding an Agentforce Agent demands a strong data foundation, extensive testing, and in-house expertise in prompt engineering and automation tools. Here are the top considerations, or prerequisites, before an AI agent joins your team.
1. Data Readiness: The Fuel for AI
AI thrives on high-quality, structured data. Just as a human employee needs training materials and business knowledge, an Agentforce Agent needs access to accurate and relevant data to function optimally.
Why It Matters
Your digital employees, or agents, are grounded in your Salesforce data, meaning that they rely on data to complete their tasks, such as answering customer questions, processing transactions, and generating insights. If your data is incomplete, outdated, or poorly structured, the agent may provide inaccurate responses, leading to inefficiencies and frustrated users.
How to Prepare
- Audit your existing data sources to ensure consistency and accuracy.
- Centralise relevant data in a structured format, leveraging CRM tools, knowledge bases, and customer interaction history.
- Define clear security guardrails to protect sensitive information while allowing the agent access to necessary datasets – this is an essential part of building your agent.
By ensuring your data is clean, structured, and accessible, you set up your digital employee for long-term success.
2. Depth of the Testing Process
Onboarding a digital employee is not a “set it and forget it” process. Yes, Agentforce is user-friendly, and much of the set-up can be done declaratively (e.g.point-and-click, rather than coding). However, extensive testing is crucial to ensure that Agentforce Agents perform tasks as expected and improve over time. In many Salesforce implementations, there is a danger of the testing process being overlooked – but this is the part of the process that determins the outputs, ensuring that the results are exactly what your team expect and desires. Think of it like an employee review process, you need to consistently check their work in order to give them room to improve.
Why It Matters
AI learns by interacting with data, and using generative AI means that you will get slightly different outputs each time – even from the same input! Therefore, this makes it necessary to thoroughly test and refine its responses before deployment. An improperly tested AI agent may misinterpret queries, provide incorrect information, or fail to escalate issues to human employees when needed.
When it comes to AI, trust is a big factor – for customers just as much as employees. When done properly, testing ensures that your customers get the best possible experience and reinforces the trust in your brand.
How to Prepare
- Conduct rigorous testing before deployment, running 30-40 different test scenarios at a minimum.
- Simulate real-world interactions to validate responses and identify gaps. The best way to do this is get the whole team on board, as they are best placed to determine the quality of the outputs. When we implement Agentforce for our customers, we ask users to do everything in their power to make the agent give a poor or incorrect response. If they can’t break it, then it’s ready to deploy!
- Continually refine responses based on feedback and performance analytics.
Thorough testing ensures your digital employees can handle a variety of scenarios with accuracy and efficiency.
3. Skills for Prompt Engineering
A key factor in optimising digital employees is the ability to craft precise prompts that guide their behaviour. Prompt engineering is an essential skill that defines how AI understands and processes information. In essence, a good prompt is a clear and detailed instruction with strict perameters, enabling AI to produce accurate and relevant outputs by providing good context and desired task details.
Why It Matters
Just as human employees follow training guides and workflows, AI-driven employees depend on well-structured prompts to operate within predefined boundaries. Poorly engineered prompts can lead to inconsistent outputs, while well-crafted prompts ensure repeatable, reliable results.
How to Prepare
- Develop repeatable prompt templates to create consistent, detailed responses aligned with your business needs – these can be over 100 lines long to cover complex workflows.
- Lean on internal experts to create prompts according to best practices, and leverage Salesforce’s free learning platform, Trailhead, to upskill your team. It is hugely advantageous for all team members to have at least a basic understanding of how the AI technology works.
- If you lack internal expertise, seek a skilled partner with real-world experience implementing Agentforce and Salesforce AI technologies successfully.
Companies that invest in strong prompt engineering practices get the most out of their digital employees by ensuring reliable and predictable AI behavior.
4. Leveraging Your Existing Automation Catalogue
Agentforce Agents don’t operate in isolation; they integrate with and pull from existing automation tools to streamline operations. Businesses that harness their existing automation infrastructure can deploy digital employees faster and more effectively.
Why It Matters
Ensuring smooth integration with Salesforce automation tools like Flow and APEX is essential for scalable and future-proofed AI implementation. And why not leverage the great work that has already been done to make your agents even better?
How to Prepare
- Map out your existing automation catalogue and identify where AI can enhance workflows.
- Use Salesforce Flow and APEX to create new AI-driven actions while maintaining architectural consistency.
- As mentioned in the prompt engineering section above, ensure that your team has the necessary expertise in automation tools to maximise efficiency.
By integrating digital employees into your existing automation framework, you create a seamless, scalable AI-powered ecosystem.
Final Thoughts
Successfully onboarding digital employees requires a shift in mindset from traditional human hiring processes. To get the best results from your Agentforce Agents, you need to:
- Ensure data readiness so your AI has accurate information to work with.
- Conduct extensive testing to refine responses and improve performance.
- Leverage in-house and partner expertise in prompt engineering to create precise, repeatable AI behaviours.
- Maximise existing automations to streamline workflows and future-proof your AI implementation.
By following these four key prerequisites, you can confidently onboard digital employees that enhance productivity, drive efficiency, and seamlessly integrate into your existing operations.
Are you ready to onboard your first digital employee? Reach out to our team for expert guidance and a complimentary readiness session to kick-start your AI journey!
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