At this year’s Salesforce World Tour, one thing was clear: Agentforce is here for the long-run, and it’s capturing imaginations across industries. Conversations buzzed with possibilities – eliminated barriers, real-time insights, reduced workloads, and faster resolutions.
But amid the excitement, we kept hearing an important question from thoughtful, strategic customers:
“What about me? What if I’m not ready for Agentforce?”
It’s a fair question – and one we believe needs a clear answer.
As a consulting partner, our job isn’t just to deliver solutions – it’s to future-proof our clients. That means not rushing headfirst into implementations that aren’t set up for success.
Agentforce is powerful. It’s shiny. It’s purple. But underneath the surface of the keynote demos, use case selection strategies and slick user interfaces, sustained success comes down to five things:
1. Data Readiness
AI is only as smart as the data it’s fed. If your service data is fragmented, unstructured, or incomplete, your Agentforce deployment won’t have the clarity it needs to function effectively. Think of it like giving a driver a map with missing roads. Before launching, it’s critical to:
- Audit and clean historical data
- Standardise fields and categories
- Ensure visibility of relevant data across systems
You need to draw the map. Without this step, AI simply can’t make informed decisions – and your users will quickly lose trust in its recommendations.
2. User Adoption
Even the most capable AI tool will fall flat if no one uses it. Success with Agentforce hinges on how well it fits into your team’s daily workflows – and whether they believe it can help. That means:
- Designing experiences that feel helpful, not intrusive
- Prioritising ease of use and low-friction interfaces
- Including your team in the rollout process, early and often
Adoption doesn’t happen by accident. It’s planned, tested, and earned.
3. User Education
It’s not enough for AI to work – your users need, and most likely want, to understand how it works. This builds confidence, encourages experimentation, and ensures responsible usage. We’ve seen firsthand how training transforms outcomes:
- Provide context-specific learning tailored to roles
- Explain the reasoning behind AI outputs
- Build literacy on prompt writing and evaluating AI responses
When people understand how the machine thinks, they stop fearing it – and start collaborating with it.
4. Cultural Buy-In
AI isn’t just a technology shift – it’s a mindset shift. For Agentforce to succeed, there needs to be strong, ideally company or department-wide, alignment on the “why”:
- Why are we introducing digital agents?
- What outcomes are we aiming for?
- How will roles and responsibilities evolve?
From leadership through to the service desk, everyone needs to see the bigger picture. That cultural readiness is a major player in the most successful implementations to date.
5. Contextual Testing
Agentforce isn’t plug-and-play. Success depends on training your digital agents in the context of your business – not just Salesforce’s demos. That includes:
- Piloting on low-risk but high-impact use cases
- Iterating based on real interactions and feedback
- Creating testing environments that simulate real-world scenarios
By the time you go live, your team should already know what to expect – and trust that the system’s been battle-tested for your unique needs.
It’s Okay to Be Focused Elsewhere
On the day, we had many conversations with businesses who said things along the lines of, “Agentforce looks great, but we’re still rolling out Marketing Cloud,” or “We’re focused on enhancing our current service processes first.”
That’s okay. In fact, it’s the right thing to do.
AI shouldn’t derail strategic roadmaps – it should complement them. As an end-to-end Salesforce partner, our job isn’t to push Agentforce prematurely. It’s to help you adopt AI when the time is right, on your terms and in line with your wider transformation plans.
If your focus right now is optimisation, integration, or foundational improvements – lean into that. You’re already laying the groundwork and it will ultimately be easier to implement AI when the time comes.
The Real Message Behind the Demos
If you spoke to the experts at World Tour, you’d start to hear this theme again and again: readiness comes before results.
Yes, Agentforce is designed to be intuitive. But implementation is a journey. You’re not just plugging in a chatbot – you’re introducing a new kind of digital coworker. That means asking smart questions like:
- What repeatable tasks do we want to automate?
- Is our case data structured and accurate?
- What flows can we take advantage of that are already in place?
- Do our agents trust and understand what AI can do for them?
- Are we prepared for the change management that comes with automation?
The truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to adopting Agentforce. And there shouldn’t be.
Some of the most valuable conversations we had at World Tour were with businesses still laying the groundwork with the standard Salesforce product suite. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s wise.
At Performa, we believe readiness isn’t a barrier – it’s the first and most critical step in any successful AI journey. That’s why we offer complimentary readiness consultations to help you evaluate where you are today and what needs to happen next.
You don’t need to sprint to catch up. You need a clear, tailored path – and a partner who knows how to guide you.
Ready When You Are
Agentforce has incredible potential to transform customer service and empower your teams. But to unlock that value, the foundation has to be right.
So if you’re asking, “Am I ready?” – know that you’re not alone, and the answer might be “not yet”. And that’s perfectly fine.
When you’re ready, we’ll be here – to support, educate, and help you build the future of your business, one step at a time. You can book your complimentary readiness consultation today if you’re ready to set out on that Agentforce journey. Got another priority in mind? Get in touch to see how we can help you cut costs, boost productivity and win customers across the Salesforce 360!
