
Salesforce Unveils AI-Powered Innovations to Revolutionize Retail Operations
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world’s leading AI-driven Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, has launched two groundbreaking AI-powered solutions for retailers: Agentforce for Retail and Retail Cloud with Modern POS. These innovations are designed to help retailers enhance productivity, improve sales, and provide more personalized shopping experiences for customers, bridging the gap between in-store and online retail.
Agentforce for Retail: Automating and Personalizing Retail Operations
One of the standout features of Salesforce’s new offerings is Agentforce for Retail, a tool that brings AI-powered agents into retail operations. With a new library of pre-built agent skills, this solution makes it easier for retailers to build AI agents that automate time-consuming tasks such as order management, appointment scheduling, and customer personalization. This allows store associates, customer service representatives, and digital merchants to focus on higher-value interactions, boosting efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Agentforce empowers retailers by offering AI agents that handle repetitive and complex tasks with precision, including order modifications, returns, and inventory management, all without human intervention. By freeing up employees from mundane tasks, Agentforce enables retailers to scale productivity and service levels, ultimately driving cost reductions and boosting customer loyalty.

New capabilities in Agentforce for Retail include:
- Commerce Skills for Order Management: These skills allow customers to manage their orders conversationally. Whether it’s updating payment details, tracking orders, or handling exchanges, customers can interact directly with AI agents through their preferred channels, reducing operational costs and enhancing service efficiency.
- Commerce Skills for Guided Shopping: Retailers can offer personalized, one-to-one shopping experiences at scale. AI-powered agents provide product recommendations based on a customer’s browsing history, inventory availability, and operational data. These agents guide customers through product selection, help with checkout, and improve the overall shopping experience.
- Field Service Skills for Appointment Scheduling: Service representatives can use AI to manage appointment bookings, such as for deliveries, installations, or consultations. The AI updates availability in real time, ensuring efficient scheduling and smoother customer interactions.
- Marketing Skills for Loyalty Promotion Creation: Marketers can leverage AI to create personalized loyalty promotions. By utilizing shopper data and POS information, Agentforce assists in crafting tailored content and promotional offers that resonate with customers, ultimately driving engagement and sales.
By enabling AI-driven task automation, Agentforce is designed to unlock new productivity levels, reduce costs, and improve the accuracy and personalization of customer interactions. The pre-built skills complement existing functionalities for various retail teams, including marketing, merchandising, and customer service.
Retail Cloud with Modern POS: A Unified, Mobile-First Solution
In addition to Agentforce, Salesforce is introducing the Retail Cloud with Modern POS, a cloud-based Point of Sale (POS) system that centralizes online and offline shopping data on a single platform. This unified system streamlines operations and enhances customer service by providing associates with all the tools they need to serve shoppers efficiently.
The key features of Retail Cloud with Modern POS include:
- Clienteling and Inventory Management: Associates can access comprehensive shopper profiles, including shopping history, preferences, and loyalty status. The system also provides real-time updates on inventory levels across warehouses and supply chains, making it easier for associates to fulfill customer needs in real time.
- Mixed Cart and Omni-channel Fulfillment: Retailers can offer flexible fulfillment options, such as buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) or buy-online-return-in-store, by using a “mixed cart” architecture. This allows each item in a cart to have its own fulfillment method, improving convenience for customers and reducing supply chain inefficiencies.
- Mobile-First Design: The POS system is designed to be mobile-first, meaning associates can check out customers anywhere in the store, even during peak shopping hours. The system works in offline mode, enabling transactions to continue even without an internet connection. Once the device reconnects, transactions are processed securely.
- Built-in Salesforce Integrations: The system integrates seamlessly with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Order Management, and Service Cloud. Retailers can quickly access customer data insights, synchronize carts, manage orders, and optimize product information. The no-code Content Management System (CMS) enables quick customization of the platform to suit each store’s unique needs.
- AI-Powered Features: The Modern POS also integrates AI features, such as voice assistance for associates, fraud analysis for returns, and personalized product recommendations, powered by real-time data.
Together, these capabilities ensure that retailers can deliver seamless, unified shopping experiences, whether customers are shopping online, in-store, or through mobile devices. The Retail Cloud with Modern POS enables retailers to better meet customer expectations while streamlining back-office operations.
Boosting Workforce Productivity and Enhancing Shopper Interactions
By combining Agentforce and Retail Cloud with Modern POS, Salesforce is helping retailers increase workforce productivity across both front-end and back-end teams. The integration of AI into retail operations supports data-driven decision-making, enabling associates to act quickly on real-time data and offer personalized engagements to shoppers.
In a study conducted by Salesforce, 81% of retail executives reported that inefficient processes and technology were major productivity drains. Store associates, on average, use more than 16 different systems and applications each day, which often leaves them without a unified, actionable view of the shopper’s journey. This fragmented approach leads to lost productivity and suboptimal shopping experiences. By integrating both Agentforce and Retail Cloud, Salesforce enables a more unified approach that connects all systems and provides a single view of the customer, boosting efficiency and enhancing the customer experience.
Customer Testimonials and Availability
Retailers like SharkNinja have already recognized the potential of Agentforce. Velia Carboni, CIO of SharkNinja, noted that Agentforce would help their team handle routine shopper inquiries, such as order status, freeing up team members to focus on innovation and meaningful interactions with customers.
Salesforce’s innovations will be available in stages, with Commerce Skills for Guided Shopping and Order Management becoming generally available in March 2025, followed by Field Service Skills for Appointment Scheduling and Marketing Skills for Loyalty Promotion Creation in February 2025. The Retail Cloud with Modern POS will be available by April 2025.