Imagine AI agents that can autonomously shop for customers, conduct personalized conversations through WhatsApp, and provide white-glove concierge service at scale. All while reducing customer service cases by 60%.
In this conversation from Salesforce’s AgentForce World Tour in Amsterdam, Product Management Director James Semple unveils the complete strategy behind Agentforce Commerce, including an exclusive partnership with OpenAI and Stripe that’s creating an entirely new protocol for autonomous AI shopping.
Discover why Salesforce structured their approach into three distinct levels, what each level offers businesses, and how companies are already seeing dramatic results from implementation.
Three levels with three different opportunities
Semple reveals a tiered approach that addresses everything from product discovery on ChatGPT to fully branded shopping experiences on company websites. Each level solves different challenges and offers unique advantages. This video might help you pick the right one for your business.
Learn why syndicated commerce might be “the new SEO”, how channel agents are transforming messaging platforms into shopping destinations, and what makes owned brand experiences worth the additional implementation effort.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol: a game-changing partnership
Salesforce, OpenAI, and Stripe are creating something totally new in e-commerce. In this video, we discuss how this protocol will enable AI agents to make purchases on behalf of users in a fully governed, auditable, and secure manner.
Semple shares surprising insights about how these autonomous agents will handle complex, multi-vendor scenarios, from party planning to travel booking, and it all goes far beyond simple product purchases.
WhatsApp shopping: it’s a lot more than sending texts
Many luxury brands are abandoning email and going all-in on WhatsApp. But why? There is a fundamental shift in how customers want to interact with brands. Semple explains how Marketing Cloud integration transforms simple outreach messages into full shopping experiences without ever leaving the messaging platform.
Discover the Q1 timeline for this capability and what it means for businesses trying to create more intimate customer relationships.
The Shopper agent is not the average chatbot
Semple tackles the chatbot comparison head-on, explaining why shopper agents go far beyond scripted responses. These AI assistants can take initiative, make recommendations based on purchase history, and seamlessly hand off between shopping, service, and support contexts.
This video reveals exactly what skills these agents possess, how they maintain context across different interactions, and why their ability to “take the lead” in conversations represents a fundamental shift in the customer experience.
The data challenge nobody wants to talk about
Semple shares a universal truth from hundreds of customer conversations: nobody’s data is perfect. But great data forms the foundation for effective AI agents. Learn what data preparation actually involves, which tools Salesforce provides to help, and why product information management suddenly matters more than ever.
The discussion explores Salesforce’s pragmatic approach to scattered data, including zero-copy connectors that access information without moving it and techniques for incorporating everything from spreadsheets to PDFs into your agent’s knowledge base.
80% of Your Customers Are Anonymous
This surprising statistic drives Salesforce’s shopper context capabilities. Semple explains how Data Cloud gathers signals to improve the shopper experience. You can think of device type, location, time of day, or even the local weather. All this data is combined to provide intelligent, personalized responses even when customers aren’t logged in.
The video includes practical examples showing how contextual awareness transforms simple product queries into precisely relevant recommendations, from jacket shopping to local store availability.
Marketing and Commerce come together
For the first time, Salesforce can feed transactional and behavioral shopping data back into Marketing Cloud in real-time. Semple explains how this integration moves marketing from “spammy” to personalized, with AI agents identifying optimal outreach times and relevant content based on actual shopping behavior.
Learn how this transformation creates value for customers rather than annoyance, with Semple sharing personal examples of targeted marketing leading to memorable experiences.
Also for small businesses?
Can smaller companies realistically implement these sophisticated AI agents? Semple addresses this crucial question directly, breaking down which levels make sense for different business sizes and explaining why Salesforce’s integrated approach might actually reduce total cost of ownership despite representing a significant investment.
The discussion covers everything from syndicated commerce as an entry point to the compounding value of features that work seamlessly across clouds without requiring custom integrations.
The Pandora example
Jewelry brand Pandora achieved 60% case closure without human intervention. Semple reveals exactly how they accomplished this, which agent capabilities made the difference, and why “where is my order” inquiries represent such a massive time drain for most merchandisers.
Discover how agents seamlessly transition between marketing outreach, shopping assistance, and order tracking, all within a single conversation thread.
The North Star is personal service at scale
Semple returns repeatedly to his vision of the family-owned store where staff know every customer personally. This “North Star” concept provides a simple test for every AI implementation: would this happen in that intimate store environment?
Learn how this principle prevents absurd outcomes (like suggesting another grand piano immediately after purchase) and guides development toward genuinely valuable customer experiences.
What You’ll Learn
- The three distinct levels of agentic commerce and when to use each approach
- How the Agentic Commerce Protocol enables autonomous AI shopping
- Why WhatsApp is becoming a primary commerce channel for luxury brands
- What differentiates shopper agents from traditional chatbots
- The data foundation required before implementing AI commerce agents
- How shopper context works for 80% of customers who aren’t logged in
- Why Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud integration transforms personalization
- Whether small and medium businesses can realistically adopt these technologies
- Real implementation results from companies like Pandora
- Best practices and industry guidance from thousands of Salesforce deployments
Whether you’re exploring AI commerce for the first time or ready to implement sophisticated agent experiences, this conversation provides the strategic framework and practical insights needed to make informed decisions about your digital commerce future.