Agentic AI is set to welcome a new horizon for Australian businesses: the possibility of a digital labour force working alongside humans to streamline operations, enhance productivity, reduce costs, and unlock new levels of innovation and scalability.
For the first time, workforces can augment human capability with trusted, autonomous AI agents working 24/7 to greatly expand productivity, efficiency, innovation, and business competition.
Business leaders struggling with consumer demand, employee burnout and scaling their workforce
A Salesforce commissioned YouGov survey of over 480 business leaders across Australia and New Zealand found AI was among the top three priorities for 79 per cent of respondents.
The research found adapting to technological change was a key business challenge for leaders over the next twelve months, alongside difficulty attracting and retaining talent and an inability to scale their business to meet demand.
The reality for most businesses is that demand far exceeds their capacity to service. This leads to backlogs, delays, inefficiencies and poor customer interactions – sales leads aren’t followed up, customer queries go unanswered. Employees are overwhelmed, burned out and frustrated.
Business leaders face intense pressure to get AI integration right and deliver tangible value. They’re grappling with how they can do it in a scalable way that positively impacts both employee productivity and customer experience.
Unlocking new capacity in a meaningful way is only possible through the introduction of digital labour through agentic AI.
Organisations no longer need to decide between enhancing productivity and building better, more intimate customer relationships. They can have both; opening the door to a workforce without limits.
How businesses are using agentic AI today
In September last year, Salesforce launched Agentforce – a new type of platform that supplies digital labour in the form of autonomous AI agents.
These agents tap into organisational data, reason, and operate within existing workflows to take action on behalf of overwhelmed teams, who we know spend 41 per cent their time on repetitive and low-value tasks.
Although it’s still early days, the impact of AI agents on businesses is already reshaping how work gets done, delivering significant cost savings and boosting productivity for companies of all sizes and industries.
Our research found among ANZ business leaders who consider AI critically important to their success over the next three years, almost three-quarters were prioritising agentic AI, and 38 per cent were already implementing it.
McKinsey estimated 75 per cent of the value of AI will come from front line functions, including customer service, marketing and sales. Businesses are putting AI agents to work on the front line – taking the pressure off burned out employees and delighting customers.
hipages is using Agentforce to reduce onboarding verification checks for new tradies from approximately three hours to near real time.
Urban Rest is leveraging Agentforce to provide 24/7 support to guests across the globe, with up to 30 per cent of enquiries now resolved through the platform, leading to a 50 per cent increase in productivity.
Pacific Smiles has turned to Agentforce, using a service agent to reduce enquiry-heavy patient booking times to as little as one and a half minutes – an 80 per cent reduction.
These are examples of companies that are unlocking trapped value with Agentforce because it is integrated with their apps, works across customer channels, augments their employees, and scales capacity for their business needs.
The technology is here, the use cases are proven, and agentic AI - humans working together with AI agents - is opening the door to limitless workforces. As we move from the art of the possible to the art of the practical, there has never been a more important time for Australian businesses to take advantage of agentic AI.
Frank Fillman is EVP and general manager, Salesforce ANZ.
