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Salesforce adds Agentforce to field service verticals

Salesforce spreads Agentforce's net to field service, across numerous industries.

Don Fluckinger
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Published: 09 Apr 2025

The busier the job someone has, many workers such as contact center agents have learned, the sweeter the spot for generative AI to save time.

Add field service techs to the list.

Today, Salesforce released the first round of Agentforce for Field Service features, aimed at improving efficiency in processes surrounding when technicians visit homes and businesses to fix or set things up. These include a tool that rejiggers a technician's schedule around cancellations and AI-generated summaries of pre-visit notes that can be replayed by voice. Post-visit reports pull customer data and work notes to recap a technician's work on a call, which can then be edited by the tech.

More is planned for June and July, including agents for calendar scheduling and on-site GenAI queries – and summarized answers -- of manuals and other technical documentation.  

Early adopter Axis Water Technologies handles commercial and residential water systems across five regional offices in Texas. The company has used Agentforce for Field Service to save time briefing technicians on their day's calls -- which can include installations and maintenance of water purification systems or deliveries such as salt pellets for water softeners -- before they get behind the wheels of their trucks, according to CTO A.J. Bagwell.

Prior to Agentforce, Axis had used Zapier and ChatGPT to generate these summaries, Bagwell said. Automating it inside Salesforce saves time and is likely more secure.

Plans include adding Amazon Connect contact center system and Salesforce Service Cloud Voice to capture more accurate content from dispatcher calls with customers describing their machine's problem and further refining the pre-visit notes for the techs, which helps get field service technicians out the door quicker, he said.

"Showing up to a customer's house on time during the day is the big key factor," Bagwell said. "These people have taken off work to be home to let you in to service their equipment. So, if you're not there on time -- and they have to take more time off from work -- they're a little upset."

Technical document summaries are key

The most important use of GenAI for field service may be the problem-solution summaries for the technicians to query on-site as they work, said Rebecca Wettemann, founder of Valoir, an independent research firm. GenAI can now even summarize complex diagrams, as well as the heady technical content so that the techs don't have to pore through it themselves on mobile devices.

This saves time for not only workers in the field but also new employees in training, she said.  

"Now I can really change the cost structure, and I don't have to have this long onboarding, because I can give them the information that they need," Wettemann said. "They don't have to ride around on a truck for three months to get up to speed, basically paying them to do nothing,"

Field service technicians work in many different vertical industries, including telecommunications, energy and utilities, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and others. Salesforce Field Service has customized Agentforce to tackle frequently repeated tasks, including billing, in 15 verticals.

AI in field service is a means to make work more efficient in a structure that still has a lot of documentation and scheduling inefficiencies to overcome, said Taksina Eammano, executive vice president and general manager of field service at Salesforce. It's a type of labor particularly suited to GenAI, and there's a shortage of technicians in many fields.

"We're not going to replace technicians in field service; this isn't the same 'digital labor' conversation that's happening in other parts of organizations," Eammano said. "We absolutely can leverage [GenAI to help them] because they're burnt out, and much of their time isn't spent using the skill sets they have to help customers."

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.

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