Welcome to the Agentic Era and the rise of humanistic interactions

A new term has entered the lexicon in 2024: Agentic. Let’s discuss what it refers to and why you should pay close attention.

For the past few years, companies have transformed their business using AI and related technologies. At the same time, companies are evolving their understanding and use of AI and its cousin generative AI.

Chatbot or Agent?

One of the more recent use-cases for AI has been the evolution of the chatbot. Some are conflating the two terms: chatbot and agent. However, they are very different. While chatbots have been around for several years, with tepid results due to their limited capability and prescriptive nature, agents bring a wholly new approach to how customers engage with companies.

Agents, unlike their chatbot predecessors, are far more sophisticated and introduce a degree of intelligence to the interaction. One of the downfalls with chatbots was their inability to learn. Agents, on the other hand, leverage this sophistication to move closer to human interaction.

Hence, we have entered the Agentic Era.

Human-like Agents?

With this new-found intelligence, agents have the capability to bring more humanistic characteristics to the customer interaction. That is not to say that agents can replace humans. More on that in a minute. There are nuances though and this is a highly-dynamic space.

At Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, Salesforce announced their Agentforce solution. Agentforce is Salesforce’s technology that allows customers to create autonomous agents which can interact with customers either online or via phone. At the conference, Salesforce demonstrated how Saks is using Agentforce to provide a human-like front end for callers looking for support. It does have its limits.

Agentic Limits

Agents are an emerging space. And just like generative AI, they are evolving very, very quickly. Even so, there are limits to what an agent can do. While agents have raised the bar on sophistication, they are not able to handle more complicated tasks. Nor are they able to reason or make decisions.

Will Agents Replace Humans?

One of the common questions is: Can agents replace humans? The short answer is no. The longer answer is sort-of yes. The better question is: How can agents augment what humans do (versus replace them)?

Getting back to innovation and job loss… The reality is that innovation does cause job loss. It also causes job creation. Many focus on the job loss without fully recognizing the job creation and value it creates.

The tractor replaced the plow. It caused job loss for the plow operators, plow manufacturers and ecosystem of cattle to pull the plow. The tractor created a wholly new ecosystem of jobs that never existed before. In addition, the capabilities that the tractor opened far exceeded the downsides.

Same goes for the automobile, assembly line, computer, and the list goes on. Innovation creates disruption.

Agents Talking to Agents

It may seem a bit science fiction, but the next step in the agent evolution is when agents interact with other agents. Today, agents are fairly specialized in what they do. When a task needs to span multiple domains, it is logical for it to move from one agent to another. Or for one agent to engage another agent to address the request.

This, in turn, creates a new opportunity (and challenge) for architecture, governance and data flows. 

CIO Perspective

Agents create a new pathway for enterprises to scale their interactions with customers and employees in a meaningful way. This is a good thing. It also presents a complexity around data management and governance if not managed properly.

Agents are the next logical step in advancing, or maturing, customer interactions…at scale.

Agents also bring a degree of automation to the fold. Many organizations are still hesitant about where and how automation is applied to process. This is something that CIOs will need to guide their organizations through.