Today’s associations face challenges due to economic fluctuations and an evolving digital landscape that demands innovation. This may result in staffing shortages, decreased member engagement and retention, and difficulty managing your day-to-day tasks.
For example, how often do you receive member comments like “How do I renew my membership?” or “Where do I register for this event?” AI-powered tools help you answer these questions and manage repetitive, administrative tasks while providing personalized member experiences.
When your association leverages a solution like Agentforce, you can handle everyday tasks with less time and effort, rerouting that energy toward developing new, innovative offerings for members. In this guide, we’ll cover the basics, benefits, and practical applications of Agentforce for associations.
What is Agentforce?
Agentforce is an AI solution from Salesforce, powered by autonomous AI agents. Agentforce can be configured to complete tasks specific to your association, communicate with and assist members, and provide personalized, real-time support.
Agentforce is built on the Salesforce platform and can work with Salesforce-native association management systems (AMS). Keep in mind that Agentforce won’t work for other AMS solutions, such as Personify. Custom agents can be built to perform various tasks, using your association’s data as the foundation, such as recommending resources to members based on their interests.
How does Agentforce work?
Agentforce is powered by a large language model (LLM), which it uses to communicate with your members and take specific actions.
Here are the other key components of Agentforce:
- Agents: Conversational AI assistants that can perform tasks on behalf of your organization.
- Actions: Individual tasks that an agent can perform, such as fetching specific resources a member requests.
- Topics: A category of individual actions related to a specific job (e.g., a topic called Renewals that contains actions like providing renewal reminders, retrieving renewal information, and updating membership status).
The LLM works with the Atlas reasoning engine to interpret requests, determine how to address them, and launch the right topics and actions to complete the task. Agentforce functions differently for each organization, and this is by design. Fíonta’s team of Salesforce experts can customize the solution and create agents to ensure your association is set up for success.
The Benefits of Using Agentforce for Associations
Agentforce offers your association various benefits, including:
- Saving staff time on tedious administrative tasks, allowing them to reallocate that time toward more important responsibilities that promote organizational growth, like developing a new outreach campaign or rolling out innovative offerings.
- Enhancing member experiences by answering questions and delivering services quickly, even outside your team’s standard working hours.
- Connecting members to relevant people and benefits helps you meet their needs and expectations and exposes them to offerings they may not have known about otherwise.
- Surfacing content for members in seconds, helping them find relevant resources without digging through your content library. For instance, they might ask the agent to provide resources about preparing for a job interview.
- Ensure that your communications are consistent in tone, quality, and delivery timeline, so members can rely on you for answers.
Additionally, setting up Agentforce is straightforward and doesn’t require extensive coding. Work with our team of experts to ensure that the setup and customization run smoothly.
How to Use Agentforce for Associations
Associations can use Agentforce to enhance member experiences and optimize operations. These improved, personalized experiences yield better retention rates, with the 2024 Membership Marketing Benchmarking report indicating that associations that employ personalization are also more likely to report increases in renewals.
Here are some practical applications for Agentforce that will empower your association to achieve similar benefits:
- Member communications: Agentforce automates responses to common inquiries, such as “How do I renew my membership?” or “Where can I find event details?” It also guides members through multi-step processes, like upgrading their membership or accessing exclusive benefits. Agentforce connects natively to AMS data housed in Salesforce or external data via Data Cloud.
- Guided membership join and intake processes: Guide new members through complex processes like onboarding. Personalize these journeys by directing Agents to provide tailored advice based on new members’ profiles, ensure forms are accurate and complete, track onboarding progress, and prompt the member to provide feedback.
- Event management: From facilitating registration transfers to answering attendee questions, Agentforce simplifies event coordination. These capabilities allow staff to focus on strategic goals rather than repetitive administrative tasks. The AI agents can generate personalized itineraries for attendees based on their preferences, offering an engaging and tailored event experience.
- Certification and continuing education: Agents can track certification progress, guide new users through certification applications, and recommend educational resources based on members’ interests and career goals.
Partner With Fíonta to Get More Out of Agentforce
As Salesforce partners, we see Agentforce as more than just a powerful AI tool that can save your team some time. Instead, it’s the key to providing personalized, high-quality experiences that keep members engaged in your association’s offerings. We focus on how your employees and members will use Agentforce, asking the following questions when configuring Agents to fit your association’s needs:
- How will association staff and members interact with this technology?
- What workflows will make team members’ jobs easier?
- How can this tool meet your association’s goals while remaining simple and intuitive?
Next, we configure Agents to align with your association’s goals and leverage member data to make each interaction relevant and meaningful.
Our services for associations aren’t limited to AI tools. As Salesforce experts, we help associations implement and customize their Salesforce software and maximize their investment over time by supporting the member journey, managing events, analyzing and interpreting data, and more.
Wrapping Up
Even out-of-the-box, Agentforce is a powerful tool for associations, nonprofits, and businesses. This tool must be implemented properly and configured around your staff and members’ needs to create the desired impact. At Fíonta, our team combines years of experience with in-depth training on Agentforce to offer tailor-made technical solutions.
Learn more about using technology to support your association with these additional resources:
- Strategies for Using AI for Associations Responsibly. Establishing guardrails and considering ethical concerns is crucial when using AI. See how to use AI responsibly in this guide.
- Lead Change with Digital Accessibility for Associations. Implement these digital accessibility tips to give all of your members positive, equitable experiences with your virtual offerings.
- Elevating Member Experience With UX Principles. Want to enhance member experiences further? Review these important user experience (UX) principles.
Reach out to our team at Fíonta and get more than a tool. Gain tailored solutions that deliver exceptional, memorable experiences to your members.