Salesforce has dropped another new edition of Agentforce: Agentforce for HR Service.
The announcement builds on the Employee Service module that Salesforce added to Service Cloud in December 2024 and has since renamed: “HR Service”.
HR Service comprises two core components: an Employee Portal and HR Service Console.
From the Employee Portal, staff can complete onboarding activities, source answers to queries, connect to HR specialists, complete tasks such as requesting vacation, and more.
Meanwhile, the HR Service Console gives HR teams a place to troubleshoot employee issues.
Agentforce for HR Service builds on these core functionalities, allowing AI agents to automate more tasks – completely or partially – and “save everyone time”.
It also allows teams working in Slack to instruct AI agents to complete HR Service tasks without opening up a separate application.
Confirming this functionality, Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM for Service Cloud, said:
What it means is that the HR teams can easily search, summarize, and respond to cases with AI right there in the flow of work, and that drives up productivity significantly.
With Agentforce for HR Service, companies receive out-of-the-box, customizable HR skills and actions. These ensure AI agents can answer FAQs, generate autonomous responses, and handle tasks.
Brands can then configure these to build AI agents for specific HR use cases.
For instance, they may build AI agents that help to update personal information, monitor paid time off (PTO) balances, submit expenses, manage onboarding, and navigate training programs.
That configuration is enabled via a low-/no-code interface.
Crucially, Agentforce for HR also connects directly with a business’s existing HR systems and adjacent technologies. As Chetan confirmed:
We are not the HR system of record. It’s integrated into HR systems, like HRIS or HCM systems.
Also, Salesforce can unify data from HR Service with that already in the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond.
They can do so through Data Cloud and protect that data via the Einstein Trust Layer. “This ensures accurate, reliable responses that employees can trust,” noted Kishan.
For Kishan, that unified data platform is one of several differentiative features.
What Differentiates Agentforce for HR Service?
Salesforce is leveraging its advanced case and knowledge management capabilities from customer service in a new HR context.
Meanwhile, Agentforce for HR Service provides an employee engagement layer, allowing employees to make HR requests from where they already work, such as Slack or an employee portal.
Additionally, Salesforce can leverage its broad network of partners and certified experts, which now support HR use cases.
Yet, Kishan also highlights another differentiator: technology convergence. He said:
From a customer’s perspective, it’s one less platform to manage if they already use Salesforce for customer engagement. Now, they can extend this investment to HR engagement.
Indeed, employees don’t need to learn a new solution. Instead, they can interact with HR Service via a familiar Slack or Service Cloud interface, thanks to Agentforce.
Salesforce Confirms Its Move Into ITSM
Already, Salesforce has powered nearly ten million HR-related searches using Agentforce. 96 percent of those were resolved without human involvement.
After sharing these statistics, Kishan promised:
We are taking all of the work and the investments that we’ve done with HR service, and we’re extending that. And we’ll also soon launch IT service management.
As with HR Service, Salesforce hopes its ITSM product will deliver a collaboration-, Slack-, and agent-first experience.
Much like HR, the IT experience can often feel fragmented. Ordering a device, reporting an issue, or tracking incidents might all happen in separate systems. Salesforce wants to streamline that.
“IT support is complicated. There’s a lot of richness and there are solutions that have been developed over the last 30, 40 years,” said Kishan. “That includes having the right configuration management, having the right workflows.
“We are developing the relevant rich IT-specific capabilities, having the IT assets, having the configurations around them, the relationships, but using our engagement layer, using our workflow layer, and using our agentic layer to help make that far easier and far simpler.”
In doing so, Salesforce is also taking on ITSM incumbent ServiceNow, as it pushes into the CRM market. That’s a key rivalry to track in 2025 and beyond
5 Key Talking Points
Kishan also touched upon several other key points when discussing the launch and Salesforce’s broader Agentforce gameplan.
1. Salesforce Clarifies Its Multi-Agentforce Strategy
Salesforce recently launched two editions of Agentforce in two weeks: Agentforce for Consumer Goods and Agentforce for Field Service.
Each Agentforce offering sits on the same unified platform and leverages the same agent builder. The difference lies in tailoring the topics and actions to each domain.
For instance, Agentforce for HR Service will offer skills to simplify building AI agents for requesting PTO, troubleshooting employee queries, etc. Meanwhile, Agentforce for Retail will include skills in order management, guided shopping, and more.
By providing different out-of-the-box topics and actions, Salesforce likely hopes to increase confidence in building more complex, custom agents. These businesses may then begin to create multi-agent processes and automate more of their work.
2. Salesforce Targets Differentiation from ServiceNow & Workday
In the HR space, Salesforce will join the ranks of Oracle, ServiceNow, and Workday. Yet, the CRM giant believes it can differentiate. Kishan said:
HCM, HRIS, and workflow systems – such as ServiceNow – have been traditionally focused on handling and managing workflow… But what we focused on was truly driving differentiated employee engagement.
According to Kishan, Salesforce’s strength lies in its platform, especially Data Cloud, which gives a unified employee view across Salesforce and external systems.
“We’re leveraging that to create seamless engagement: whether via Slack, portals, or AI agents, transitioning smoothly between bots and human reps, and making reps more productive,” he continued. “The workflows are important, but the engagement layer is our differentiator.”
3. Slack Is Becoming a Key Differentiator for Agentforce
Salesforce has already integrated Slack into customer service scenarios, such as case swarming, where multiple teams collaborate to resolve complex cases.
Agentforce for HR Service extends those capabilities to HR, using Slack as the employee-facing layer for submitting cases, getting updates, etc.
As Salesforce continues integrating Agentforce with its collaborations platform, Slack is becoming the operational center point for AI agents.
“We have several customers, especially smaller customers, who start their business with Slack,” noted Kishan. “They are just extending Slack to help them with their lead and contact management, support conversations, and opportunity tracking.”
4. There’s Still No Change to Salesforce’s Pricing Model
Agentforce for HR Service will follow Salesforce’s broader Agentforce pricing model, which costs two dollars per conversation.
Some have questioned this model, noting that AI agents bring different scales of value across the organization. Also, as AI agents are still new to the enterprise, forecasting consumption is tricky.
That said, the model does have benefits. As Kishan stated: “The more you do, the more you save money, and the more actions are priced.”
Yet, in the background, Salesforce will likely work on ways to rethink its pricing structure.
Nevertheless, as agentic AI reshapes how people work, creating a pricing model that fits into new work structures will prove a significant challenge.
5. Key HR Partnerships to Be Announced Soon
Salesforce has built its integrations for Agentforce for HR Services, recognizing that customers need different systems depending on geography, industry, and company size.
However, deeper integrations are seemingly on the way, with Kishan teasing that announcements on key vendor partnerships are coming soon. However, he stressed that the design is intentionally broad and adaptable.
Additionally, Salesforce’s independent software vendor (ISV) and systems integrators (SI) partners can extend and configure HR Service using the same tools they use across the Salesforce platform.
Via the Agentforce Partner Network, they may also build new actions, integrations, and use cases.
