B2B (Business-to-Business) customer service is complex, involving multiple relationship layers, big transactions, and specific support needs that need extra attention. With fewer but larger customers, the stakes are high. Our research shows that 88% of customers are more likely to buy again with good service, emphasizing the importance of getting it right every time.
Fortunately, AI agents like Agentforce can help your business overcome these challenges and deliver exceptional B2B customer service alongside your service reps. For one, Agentforce can effectively and independently handle complex B2B cases within the guardrails your business sets. This provides reliable, trusted round-the-clock support across all time zones for tough queries and helps to reduce rep burnout.
Let’s look at how you can use Agentforce to transform your B2B customer service.
What you’ll learn:
Why AI agents are ideal for B2B customer service
Benefits of AI agents in B2B customer service
Use cases of AI agents in B2B customer service
Challenges of implementing AI agents in B2B customer service & how to mitigate them
5 best practices for using AI agents in B2B customer service
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What is B2B customer service?
Before we get started, what is B2B customer service, exactly? B2B customer service is all about giving support and help to other businesses, addressing their specific needs and challenges. The goal is to build strong, long-term relationships and keep them satisfied with personalized support and expert advice. This can boost loyalty, bring in repeat business, and earn you some great referrals. (Back to top)
What are AI agents?
AI agents, such as Agentforce, are a type of artificial intelligence system that can understand and respond to customer inquiries without human intervention. Agentforce can tackle a wide range of jobs autonomously, from managing time-consuming tasks to answering routine questions and resolving complex B2B customer service issues. Unlike chatbots that stick to predefined scripts, agents use natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and contextual understanding to have intelligent, conversational, and personalized interactions.
Agentforce has a ‘brain’, called the Atlas Reasoning Engine. It breaks down complex queries, makes them super clear, and retrieves the right, trusted data from knowledge management systems and Data Cloud. Then, it fine-tunes an action plan to make sure everything is accurate, reliable, and perfectly executed, all within the guardrails you’ve set.
Plus, Agentforce has multi-modal understanding, meaning it can interpret and respond to various input types like text, images, and audio using NLP and computer vision. It can extract relevant information to provide more accurate and contextually appropriate responses to your customers.
Most importantly, Agentforce can continuously improve its performance through self-learning, keeping up with changing customer needs, which is essential in complex B2B customer service. Your customers get accurate and efficient support without having to repeat themselves. (Back to top)
Why AI agents are ideal for B2B customer service
B2B customer service comes with managing complex technical questions, navigating long sales cycles, and addressing the needs of multiple stakeholders within a single, often large organization. Decision-makers are also frequently spread across various time zones, adding another layer of complexity to providing timely and consistent support.
Agentforce can handle the intricacies and demands of your B2B customer service effectively and efficiently. Agents can answer complex queries and take on thousands of interactions simultaneously 24/7. This makes sure your customers receive reliable and timely assistance whenever they need it, even outside regular business hours. By analyzing historical data, customer preferences, and past interactions, agents can also provide highly personalized support. This strengthens B2B customer service relationships and demonstrates that your business has a deep understanding of their unique needs. (Back to top)
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Benefits of AI agents in B2B customer service
Adopting Agentforce for B2B customer service offers many advantages to your organization and customers, including:
Cost savings: Agentforce helps to save on costs by managing customer inquiries and time-consuming tasks around the clock, eliminating the need to hire and train additional staff. This reduces labor costs and improves efficiency, allowing your team to focus on high-value work.
Improved response times: Agentforce can instantly process and respond to customer inquiries, ensuring quicker resolution of issues. Faster response times not only boost customer satisfaction (CSAT), but also minimize the risk of downtime or operational disruptions. Such issues can be costly for your customers and lead to frustration or worse, churn.
Enhanced service rep support: By handling complex issues and routine tasks, Agentforce frees up your service reps to focus on more strategic work. This leads to greater productivity, a more efficient use of resources, and better employee experience.
Seamless omnichannel experience: Agentforce can operate across multiple customer service channels, including SMS, WhatsApp, and voice — enabling you to meet your customers wherever they’re at. This ensures a seamless and unified customer experience, regardless of how customers choose to interact with your business.
Proactive customer service: Agentforce can deliver proactive customer service. Agents keep an eye on customer accounts, spotting potential issues before they become major problems. For example, they can monitor usage patterns and alert customers about potential issues before they arise, helping businesses avoid costly disruptions.
Scalable support for growth: As your business expands, your B2B customer service demands grow. Agentforce provides scalable support that allows your company to manage increased customer interactions on demand without the need for overtime or help from contractors.
Data-driven insights: Agentforce collects and analyzes data from every customer touchpoint. This provides valuable insights into customer behavior, pain points, and preferences. These insights help your business to improve your products, services, and overall customer service experience.
Multilingual capabilities: B2B companies often serve a global customer base. Agents equipped with multilingual capabilities can communicate effectively with customers in their preferred language, breaking down language barriers and improving accessibility. (Back to top)
Use cases for AI agents in B2B customer service
Agentforce can be used in a range of B2B customer service scenarios. Just to name a few, here are some use cases for Agentforce:
Technical support: B2B customers often need help with intricate questions and technical problems. Remember, one of Agentforce’s main advantages for B2B customer service is its ability to handle complex issues independently. Agentforce can provide detailed, thoughtful answers, walk customers step-by-step to resolutions, and escalate unresolved issues to service reps.
Appointment scheduling: Agentforce recommends the best time slots, manages rescheduling, and collects customer details in a conversational tone. It’s like having a top-notch scheduling coordinator available 24/7. This can greatly benefit industries like field service by streamlining the scheduling process.
Order and inventory management: Agentforce can track orders, provide real-time updates on inventory availability, and assist customers with placing or modifying orders. This simplifies the purchasing process, ensures accuracy, and makes sure your customers always have what they need.
Customer onboarding: The onboarding process is critical for setting customers up for success to use your product or service. Agentforce can deliver step-by-step onboarding instructions, answer questions, and provide recommended resources, such as knowledge base articles and free Trailhead learning. This lets your reps focus on more strategic work.
Knowledge base navigation: Many B2B companies offer extensive knowledge bases for self-service support. Agentforce acts as an intelligent search tool, helping your customers to quickly find the information they need without combing through multiple resources. (Back to top)
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Challenges of implementing AI agents in B2B customer service & how to mitigate them
While AI agents offer major benefits, implementing it does come with challenges that your business must address to deliver efficient and effective B2B customer service. Let’s explore some of these challenges and how to set up for success.
Integration with existing systems: Integrating AI agents with an existing CRM and other systems can be complex, especially if your business has outdated infrastructure. Proper planning and testing are essential for seamless integration. Agentforce and Service Cloud are natively built on the Salesforce CRM platform, making it easy to get up running quickly with B2B customer service. Plus, Agentforce integrates with Data Cloud, accessing comprehensive, trusted data for personalized, real-time interactions.
Handling complex queries: B2B inquiries are complex, but Salesforce simplifies agent setup and configuration with Prompt Builder in Agent Builder. This lets you use prompts, flows, and other features that already exist and launch via Agent Builder. You can create an agent today with Trailhead’s Build an AI Agent with Agentforce. The Serviceblazer Community on Slack is a great way to get Agentforce tips from fellow service pros already using it — join today.
Stakeholder adoption: It’s important to get buy-in from both customers and service reps. Some customers might be hesitant to interact with AI agents, especially for critical and complex issues where a lot is at stake. Building trust in AI involves demonstrating its reliability and ensuring seamless handoffs to service reps when necessary. Be transparent! Tell your customers that Agentforce is now part of your customer service team. Boost your service reps’ confidence by highlighting how Agentforce can make their jobs easier and enhance their productivity in the support process. Use generative AI to quickly create FAQs for both customers and service reps to address any concerns they may have. Be sure to have a human review them for accuracy.
Initial implementation costs: While AI agents offer long-term cost savings, the initial investment in technology, training, and integration can be substantial. Be sure to weigh these costs against your anticipated ROI, which can be much more significant like delivering huge benefits to your business, employees, and customers. Agentforce customers are projected to reduce cost of service by 25% or more by year three. (Back to top)
5 best practices for using AI agents in B2B customer service
To maximize the impact of Agentforce, here are five tips to set up for success:
Start with clear objectives: Define specific goals for implementing Agentforce, such as handling complex issues 24/7, improving customer satisfaction, or automating time-consuming tasks. Clear objectives help guide the implementation process.
Ensure agent/service rep collaboration: Agentforce should work alongside your service reps. Design workflows that allow for seamless transitions between agents and your service reps for higher priority issues that require critical thinking.
Train Agentforce on industry-specific needs: B2B customer service often requires specialized knowledge. Train agents on terminology that pertains to your industry, processes, and common customer issues to ensure they provide accurate and relevant support.
Monitor and optimize performance: Regularly evaluate the performance of Agentforce using customer service metrics like response time, resolution rate, and customer feedback. Use this data to refine their capabilities and improve their effectiveness.
Ensure data security and compliance: B2B interactions often involve sensitive information. Implement security measures to protect customer data and ensure compliance with industry regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA.
Adding Agentforce to your B2B customer service team can really boost the quality and speed of support for your customers. These agents can independently handle complex interactions and provide help around the clock, which strengthens customer relationships and increases satisfaction. Investing in Agentforce not only meets your current needs, but also sets your business up for future growth and success. (Back to top)
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