Agentforce is Salesforce’s new AI agent platform, enabling businesses to build and deploy intelligent agents quickly and effectively. Agentforce can help reluctant real estate businesses adopt AI with less effort, but is it so?
Andrea Carvalho, Salesforce Principal Technical Instructor, is here to teach you to use Agentforce without technical knowledge. What skills do you need? Where to start? How do you stay human when everyone says AI is better than you? And how not to give up. Practical steps and industry insights wrapped in friendly conversation, heartwarming stories, and a few jokes.
Key topics covered:
Today, we are talking about Agentforce, a new Salesforce platform for AI agents. Our guest today is Andrea Carvalho, Principal Technical Instructor at Salesforce. Her career has taken her from Brazil to Vancouver to New York to Amsterdam to Dublin, where she’s been teaching for almost six years now. She started working with Salesforce CRM in 2008 and has become an expert who is spreading awareness and inspiration through her workshops.
“ Many commercial real estate leaders wonder where to start with AI. Agentforce definitely offers a way in. But what kinds of companies or teams are taking the first steps in Agentforce? ”
“ Forget about technology for the IT team, and not for me. Technology is for everybody. But AI has been such a democratization of this knowledge even further. What Agentforce brings to this is a way for you to easily build and deploy that agent to make your business more efficient, not just in limbo but creating that connection with your data. ”
The most common problem for all types of companies is customer service. It can be much more efficient with Agentforce. When you integrate AgentForce with your existing Salesforce data from different clouds, the interaction with customers becomes more “grounded” and natural. While AI handles routine requests like password resets, your team can focus on complex issues that require human expertise. When escalation is needed, the handoff is seamless.
“ I think there are use cases for most organizations, but really understanding what is the problem I'm trying to resolve will give me that edge to really know how to implement Agentforce in a more effective way. ”
“ Speaking of the use cases, what's one example you think is relevant to showing the power of AI agents for real estate companies? ”
“ There is a Scape (Student Accommodation in Australia). Students coming from abroad to live in Australia need accommodations. So, they needed to find a way to serve the students who might arrive in the middle of the night or during the day and might have questions about accommodations or bookings. So, they have Agentforce helping them assist those students 24-7 in a more direct way. And if the case needs escalation, they hand this off with data. ”
Scape manages 38 properties serving 18,000 international students across Australia. With students arriving at all hours from different time zones, they needed a solution to provide instant support for accommodation questions and bookings—whether students landed at midnight or midday.
“ Recently, we worked on a project where we built an agent for a commercial real estate firm, and one of the use cases was about the research. So when an agent or a broker has a potential buyer or tenant, they can use an agent in Salesforce to immediately receive the result without using the typical tools like filtering and surfing through the data.
But if they don't have this data in their system, they would want to have this data researched on the internet. Seasoned commercial real estate professionals would say you don't have all the data publicly available. But still, you can augment, you can enrich your data. You can get something that helps you receive much more value from the system just by using an additional tool that replaces or simplifies something time-consuming. ”
Agentforce offers versatile agent functionalities for commercial real estate:
No need for coding experience doesn’t mean you don’t need any skills at all. Sometimes, soft skills can become a solid basis for a highly technical and complicated solution like an AI-powered one. After years in the industry, Arthur and Andrea know what is essential for a successful start.
“ You don't have to be an AI expert or tech expert to start building AI solutions. What you need is a real use case, the right support, and a mindset open to learning.
So, from your perspective as an instructor, what skills are most helpful for the team starting with AI agents? ”
“ Curiosity and a learner mindset. So, really thinking about what I am learning here. How can I apply that? Communication is also good. AI is a fantastic tool, but knowing how to ask the question is important. Having that patience of talking to the agent to refine the questions and really get to that will be a great skill to have. And really thinking strategically: What is the priority here, and how do I start small to get to the big picture? ”
“ Many people don't realize how, for example, prompt engineering is a technical term, and someone would think, "Oh, I need to have some skills. I need to understand how to code. I need to be a developer to learn prompt engineering." Under the surface, it's just a communication skill. If you know how to communicate, if you know how to ask questions, then you eventually become better prompt engineer. ”
“ What you say is perfect. Prompt engineering is a clear example because it's not just "put it there and it's done." It's "put it there and test. "Oh, is this the LLM that I need to use here? No, let's try a different LLM. Let's try a different question. Let's try a different grounding way." As you refine that, you will have something good enough for version one. ”
Arthur and Andrea have probably already convinced you that the absence of technical skills is not a deal-breaker when it comes to Agentforce.
The truth is your skills are probably enough to launch a basic agent, but not to configure it to meet more specific needs. Ascendix offers a quick-start package at a reasonable price for businesses that need more specialized solutions.
If you are a little lost on where to start, Andrea is sharing a few useful resources, links, and podcasts.
“ For someone who has a good use case, but doesn't have any AI expertise, what would be your recommendation on how to start their first project, Andrea?
”
“ If they're brand new to Salesforce or to AgentForce, they can start on Trailhead. I think Trailhead is a great tool that Salesforce has for learning.
We also have a series of Virtual Interactive Workshops delivered online by certified instructors, such as myself. And what we do there is help you learn the concept and put that in practice right then and there.
Get an account on ChatGPT if you haven't yet, or other AI tools, and start playing with it. Start asking questions.
If you go to the Salesforce help website, you will see that there is an agent there. You can ask that agent, and it will support you with additional resources that can also get you to the resolution.
So there are different ways that you can do that. If you haven't started yet, you have to start now because the future is with AI. ”
Useful Resources to Get Started with Agentforce:
“ We are actually building some products already, but I hesitate to mention that we are building something because in our industry, clients get scars because they've tried already to do something and it didn't go well. They invest money and resources. And so what's really important at this point is to share that, "Hey, we've already built something and we failed, and we know how to build it better." ”
“ But that's the beauty of things, right? Because when you failed, you learned. If we think about Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and all those good guys who invented everything that we know, they tried many times and they failed many times. But the secret is that they learned from those failures and they grew. ”
How often have you read news about the top 10 ways for companies to replace their employees with AI? Such articles only push the greatest misconception about AI further.
“ Do you have maybe an insight on the misconceptions that you often hear when it comes to using AI? ”
“ One thing that I hear a lot of people asking is, "Oh, so now we can fire all my people agents and just have Agentforce?" While the agent might replace many people, AI, in general, is not to replace us, but to reinvent the way we do business. So, for commercial real estate, for example, it's not going to replace the person calling. But it might help you because when you go and make that call, you already have the information of the customer. So, I spend more time actually talking to my customers and really driving that sale, than doing the administrative work of researching. I have to validate that, but I am more comfortable just doing the things that I'm good at. That is talking to people and selling. ”
The Concrete Voice is a commercial real estate technology podcast started by Arthur Ambartsumyan after over 10 years of honing his expertise in CRE, PropTech, FinTech, AI, and other technologies. He asks thought-provoking questions, so you get insightful answers and practical tips. The main goal is to make our listeners more informed about CRE technology innovations, trends, and future possibilities.
Listen to The Concrete Voice podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
We choose our guests very carefully to ensure the quality of insights but we are always open to collaboration. Please, contact us via email [email protected] to discuss the opportunity for your appearance in the next episodes.
Kateryna is an experienced writer focused on topics related to Salesforce consulting and optimizing operations within the real estate industry via CRM implementation. Through her insightful articles, Kateryna aims to help organizations make the most of their Salesforce adoption.
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