Salesforce customers in the UK are starting to develop new businesses based on the vendor's agent technology, according to country chief executive Zahra Bahrololumi and chief technology officer Paul O'Sullivan.
Dreamforce executives in San Francisco told a group of British journalists how the company is working with clients to capitalize on its recent wave agent AI technology.
Bahrololumi said it was important to note that the UK is the third largest AI market after the US and China, adding that she was proud of the London-based AI market. Salesforce AI Center, launched in 2024..
“Remember that this Artificial Intelligence Center was originally intended to be a focal point for the community – for our clients, policymakers, government and the education sector – and it was intended to reflect our commitment to investment in skills and capacity development,” she said.
“It was a great success for us, and one of the most significant things was that it allowed us to build on one of the acquisitions we made, Convergence.ai. Thus, for the first time, we have engineering and R&D capabilities outside of North America and within the region. This allows us to serve not just the UK but the whole of EMEA, and that's… something we've never had before.”
Bahrololumi highlighted several UK clients where Agentforce played an important role. One of them Formula 1where she said they take fan engagement “to the next level and allow them to monetize the engagement with fans in the moment.”
“I talked to Stefano [Domenicali]CEO of Formula 1, yesterday, and what worries him most is [real-time] “An agent who can explain the rules of Formula 1,” she said. “When there's a race and there's a dispute, the most Googled question is 'What are the rules and what's the procedure?' and his agent will be able to answer that question at a moment's notice.”
Heathrow is another major Salesforce customer.and Bahrololumi said they now report 95% accuracy of their virtual customer service agent data, which is “highly comparable” to human error.
She said there are clients whose use cases go beyond Salesforce's core customer service and sales area, and beyond the “well-trodden path” of automating repetitive tasks to free up employees to work on higher-value work: “Historically, we've dominated the front office, but we work with a very large global company whose mission is to provide zero operations [ZeroOps] possibilities”.
“Combining artificial intelligence with robotics and operational technologies in our physical environment will be an important next chapter.”
Zahra Bahroloumi, Salesforce
ZeroOps refers to a fully automated operational framework for IT or business processes, eliminating the need for human intervention. Bahrololoumi also mentioned an investment bank that is looking to reduce the time spent communicating with clients in the pre- and post-meeting stages of interaction, which is very important for bankers.
“Another example that has not yet been realized is a very large energy and utility company that has well-established, highly automated service capabilities, but they do not have a single view of their customers that would allow them to cross-sell and upsell different offerings,” Bahrololumi said.
Business process outsourcing partnerships will be fertile ground for agent-based AI applications outside Salesforce's traditional core territory, she said.
In the same interview, Paul O'Sullivan made a similar point regarding “agent-to-agent negotiations”, saying that they have a “maturity path” for their clients.
“Stage zero is no agents,” he added. “The first stage is one agent, one task. The second stage is a multifaceted agent who can work in the front, middle and back office. The next stage is communication between agents.”
He said he had spoken to two clients who are “both independent” and wanted to explore it: “It means an opportunity to combine the two businesses. You will have two agents from their respective organizations talking together to propose a new sales and distribution model to them.
“They're already collaborating with each other, they're both known to each other, but they're not cross-pollinating, and now we've shown them how they can achieve exponential growth by getting these agents to talk to each other and generate new revenue.”
Bahroloumi expressed a point of view also expressed at London Agentforce World Tour conference in London in June In 2025, AI has greater potential than the Internet, adding: “Combining AI with robotics and operational technologies in our physical environment will be an important next chapter.”
And just as the internet economy survived the dot-com boom and bust, so too will any conceivable burst of the AI bubble. “We have to go through this in every innovation cycle,” Bahrololumi added. “We're adapting and adapting, and AI is already in place. I don't think we're going back. The people who will thrive will be the ones who work with AI responsibly. That's the most important point I'd like to make.”
