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Oct 15, 2025 ✍️
Cybernoz 📁
ComputerWeekly 💬
0 ⏱️
5 min
Dreamforce 2025: Benioff vaunts Slack as interface to agentic enterprise
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, told attendees of the software supplier’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco that enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) will need to rise to the level of consumer AI if “agentic enterprises” are to be built.
The customer relationship management (CRM) supplier announced Agentforce 360, a platform described as the “culmination” of its agentic AI work over the past year, since Benioff placed a major bet on it. This is in contrast to co-pilot-based generative AI (GenAI)-based products, such as Microsoft Copilot.
At Dreamforce 2025, Benioff said GenAI deployed in a “bolt-on, DIY” manner had yielded little to no business value for companies and other organisations. He advocated a platform approach where artificial intelligence is baked into applications and makes full use of an army of virtual agents working hand in glove with human agents.
Benioff is also positioning Slack, a technology Salesforce acquired in 2020, as the operating system (OS) of the so-called agentic enterprise, making it the primary conversational interface to agentic AI systems deployed in organisations.
In a press and analyst conference on the opening day of the event, Benioff repudiated a claim that agentic AI adoption only stands at 8% of Salesforce’s 150,000 customers. “It’s the fastest-growing technology in our history, and you have to remember the millions of Slack customers,” he said.
Agentforce 360 connects humans, agents and data on one trusted platform, helping every employee and every company achieve more than they ever thought possible Marc Benioff, Salesforce
Benioff also said customers are being overwhelmed by the pace of technology innovation, and the answer to that is to look at agentic AI adoption among “front runners”, such as Salesforce customers Williams Sonoma, Pandora, PepsiCo, FedEx and Dell.
He also disclosed that business technology theorist Geoffrey Moore has been coaching him through the market adoption of agentic AI.
In the statement announcing Agentforce 360, Salesforce claimed AI elevates rather than replaces workers: “In an agentic enterprise, every team operates with 24/7 intelligence. Sales leads are never missed, service never sleeps, and every employee has an AI partner that helps them move faster and make smarter decisions. The result is a new era of productivity, customer connection and growth.”
Benioff said: “Agentforce 360 connects humans, agents and data on one trusted platform, helping every employee and every company achieve more than they ever thought possible.”
The platform comprises:
An Agentforce 360 Platform, featuring a “conversational builder”, hybrid reasoning for greater control and accuracy, and voice capabilities.
Data 360, styled as a trusted, unified data layer that gives virtual agents business context, using Tableau Semantics.
Customer 360 apps that are said to capture how any organisation sells its products and services, using AI agents.
Slack as a “conversational interface for humans and agents to work together, connecting knowledge, actions and data in real time”.
The supplier cited some customer validation of its agentic AI technology, which it said is used by 12,000 customers.
John Thompson, vice-president of sales strategy and operations at Reddit, said its use of Agentforce has deflected 46% of support cases and cut resolution times by 84%, reducing average response time from 8.9 minutes to 1.4 minutes. “This efficiency lets us provide on-demand help for complex tasks, boost advertiser satisfaction by 20%, and free up human reps from repetitive questions,” he added.
Pierre Matuchet, senior vice-president of IT and digital transformation at Adecco, said the recruitment firmhandled 51% of candidate conversations outside of standard working hours with agents. “Agentforce lets us automate high-volume tasks, strategically freeing our recruiters’ time to focus on quality customer engagement,” he said.
And OpenTable’s senior vice-president of global customer success, George Pokorny, said it was resolving 70% of diner and restaurant enquiries autonomously. “Agentforce delivered the warmth and white-glove service our industry demands. Within weeks, our restaurant agent handled 70% of questions – a marked improvement over our previous chatbot,” he said.
Alongside the announcement of Agentforce 360, Salesforce promoted Slack as the primary conversational interface for its software, saying it is introducing AI capabilities into Slack tobring everything an enterprise needs into one place.
Slack CEO Denise Dresser said: “Every company is asking where their agents will live, how they’ll get context, and how to make them useful. Slack is the answer.”
Salesforce said:“Because Agentforce-powered experiences live inside your team’s conversations, they understand who you are, what you’re working on, and what matters most. This shift from static workflows to dynamic, conversational experiences means people and agents can work together in real time with all the context they need.”
Salesforce claimed that Slack is the best place for all an organisation’s AI tools because it’s where teams are already collaborating and working.
The supplier said OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, Writer, Dropbox, Notion, Cognition, Vercel, Cursor, and others are delivering intelligent agents that live in Slack, bringing insights directly into an organisation’s workflow.
