Digital Labor Meets Physical Retail: Inside Salesforce’s New AI-Commerce Strategy
In a significant move that signals the retail industry’s growing embrace of artificial intelligence, Salesforce unveiled its new AI-powered retail platform at the National Retail Federation’s annual conference in New York City. The announcement of Agentforce for Retail and Retail Cloud with Modern POS represents a strategic shift in how retailers might approach workforce augmentation and store operations.
The debut, taking place at retail’s biggest annual gathering at the Jacob Javits Center, positions AI not as a replacement for human workers but as what Salesforce terms “digital labor” – AI agents designed to handle routine tasks while enabling human employees to focus on more complex customer interactions.
“What we’re seeing is a fundamental shift in retail operations,” explains Nitin Mangtani, SVP & GM of Retail at Salesforce, in an interview. “Traditional workforce scaling can’t meet modern retail’s dynamic demands. When a snowstorm disrupts flights and your call center volume spikes tenfold, you can’t hire 9,000 people in an hour. But digital labor can scale instantly, helping triage situations and maintain service levels during peak demands.”
Table of contents
Key Announcements
Salesforce is introducing four distinct AI agent capabilities for retailers:
- Commerce Skills for Order Management: These AI agents handle customer service tasks like order status inquiries, payment or shipping updates, and exchange processing. The system allows customers to modify orders conversationally through their preferred communication channel.
- Commerce Skills for Guided Shopping: This set of AI agents provides personalized shopping assistance at scale, offering product recommendations based on customer preferences, inventory data, and operational constraints. The agents can conduct natural language conversations with customers to help them search products, fill shopping carts, and complete purchases.
- Field Service Skills for Appointment Scheduling: These specialized agents manage delivery, installation, and consultation bookings. The system uses AI to optimize scheduling based on real-time resource availability and customer preferences.
- Marketing Skills for Loyalty Promotion Creation: These agents assist marketers in developing and refining loyalty promotions. The AI analyzes customer data, point-of-sale information, and segmentation metrics to help create more effective promotional content and email campaigns.
Integration and Implementation
What sets Salesforce’s approach apart is its deep integration with existing retail data systems and its focus on practical business outcomes.
“We’re not just building conversational AI,” Mangtani emphasizes. “We’re creating AI agents that understand the complex semantics of retail operations – from real-time inventory positions to customer purchase history. This precision in understanding retail context is what enables truly valuable automation.”
This launch addresses a critical pain point in retail operations. Salesforce’s research indicates that store associates currently juggle an average of 16 different applications daily, with 81% of retail executives reporting that inefficient processes and technology significantly impact productivity.
Early adopter SharkNinja sees the platform as a way to elevate customer service. “In retail, routine inquiries often prevent staff from focusing on innovation and meaningful customer interactions,” notes Velia Carboni, CIO of SharkNinja. “By automating standard processes like order tracking, we’re freeing our team to deliver the high-impact experiences that drive customer loyalty.”
Modern POS: Salesforce’s First Hardware Ecosystem Play
The launch of Retail Cloud with Modern POS marks a significant shift for Salesforce, representing its first venture into physical retail hardware ecosystems. The system comes to Salesforce through its September 2024 acquisition of PredictSpring, a modern POS provider founded by Nitin Mangtani, who now leads Salesforce’s retail division.
“Traditional point-of-sale systems often run on hardware from the late 90s,” Mangtani explains. “We’re bringing retail technology into the modern era with a cloud-based system that can run on everything from fixed terminals to iPhones.” The system leverages newer technologies like the NFC readers in iPhones for payment processing, eliminating the need for traditional card reader dongles.
What distinguishes this initiative is Salesforce’s approach to hardware partnerships. Rather than manufacturing hardware directly, the company has established a certification program for hardware partners who produce cash drawers, barcode scanners, receipt printers, and other essential POS equipment. This marks the first time Salesforce has created a hardware compatibility ecosystem, working with system integrators to ensure seamless deployment.
The modern POS system includes several key features:
- Mobile-first design with secure offline mode for continuous operation
- Mixed cart architecture supporting various fulfillment methods per item
- Built-in clienteling and inventory management capabilities
- Real-time integration with online shopping data
- Support for both fixed terminals and mobile devices
- Compatibility with existing retail hardware through certified partners
“For mid-market and enterprise retailers, this offers a path to modernization without requiring complete hardware replacement,” Mangtani notes. “They can maintain existing printers and other hardware while upgrading their software infrastructure to meet modern retail demands.”
The Path Forward
Most of the new Agentforce retail capabilities will roll out between February and March 2025, with the Modern POS system launching alongside these AI features. The timing of the announcement at NRF’s “Big Show” is strategic, as retailers gather to plan their technology investments for the year ahead.
“The retail industry stands at a crossroads,” Mangtani reflects. “The question isn’t whether to adopt AI, but how to implement it in ways that genuinely enhance both employee capabilities and customer experiences. The most successful retailers will be those who view AI as an augmentation tool rather than a replacement technology.”
The platform’s success will likely depend on how effectively it can integrate with existing retail operations while delivering measurable improvements in both employee productivity and customer experience. As the retail industry continues its digital transformation, Salesforce’s approach suggests a future where AI and human workers collaborate rather than compete.
Salesforce’s prominent presence at NRF 2025, including this major product launch, underscores the growing importance of AI technologies in retail’s future. The company’s vision of “digital labor” may offer a preview of how retailers will navigate the balance between automation and human interaction in the years ahead.