Chapter 6Are Agents Really Different from Chatbots and Co-pilots?
In the spirit of not burying the lede,1 I will surprise exactly none of you when I say the answer is: yes.
Agentforce AI agents are different from traditional chatbots and even more recent co-pilots, which can also use AI. It's important to understand the differences when making decisions about when to use agents and when other technologies will suffice.
On June 26, 2024, six months before the confab described in our opening chapter, Marc Benioff took to X to announce the launch of “Einstein Service Agent on Salesforce's new Agentforce Platform!” He explained it was designed for machine-human collaboration and “rapid case resolution.”
Shortly thereafter, the company released a new first-call deck (FCD)2 for Service Cloud to help internal sellers and prospects explain the difference between this new generation of AI agents and the ubiquitous chatbots already widely deployed for customer service.
The document contained in Figure 6.1 demonstrates the difference under discussion.
The main message is that bots can be very useful – and they are – but only in circumscribed and predefined scenarios. An example might be resetting a password or posing a WISMO question – which is retail-speak for the ultra-common “Where IS My Order?” But nuance and complexity elude the bot.
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