The news: Salesforce’s Agentforce has handled over 1 million AI support chats from its customers in the past nine months, resolving 84% of queries and cutting customer support case volume by 5%. 

The impact on business? About 500 Salesforce support engineers were reassigned to higher-value service roles, per VentureBeat.

Salesforce scaled from 126 weekly AI conversations in English to 45,000 weekly AI conversations in six languages. The company used a phased approach—identifying and fixing critical AI issues before they could permeate the broader customer base. 

This method contrasts with the “move fast and break things” approach that some companies are applying to AI development. 

The secret ingredient: Salesforce found success by making its AI sound human. Teaching bots to say “I’m sorry” and recognize frustration led to higher customer satisfaction than raw automation alone. 

Here are some takeaways: 

• Empathy matters. AI apologizes during service outages, responding with “I’m so sorry, that’s terrible, let me get you through,” before passing the call to a human agent and potentially boosting customer satisfaction.
• Content hygiene is vital. Redundant support articles—the source of AI training—were pruned to improve accuracy, cutting down on response times and speeding up resolution. 
• Guardrails are flexible. Rigid rules, such as blocking competitor mentions, backfired in situations where customers were asking about integrating with competing products, like Microsoft Teams (a Slack competitor). Restrictions were replaced with broader guidelines.

High touch wins: Salesforce infused Agentforce with human soft skills, proving empathy boosts resolution rates and drives better support metrics.

More empathic AI that can anticipate customer challenges could change the perception of 64% of global consumers who believe human agents understand their needs better than AI, per Auth0.

Our take: For brands, the lesson is clear—automation alone won’t win loyalty. Build or refine AI that reflects a brand’s voice and emotional intelligence. Lean on clarity, empathy, and easy handoffs to humans to reinforce user experience, which in turns drives loyalty and satisfaction. 

Dive deeper: For more about how AI is transforming customer experience (CX) read our report on AI Agents and the Consumer Journey.