Episode 82 · Season 1
Agentforce Isn’t the Hard Part. Adoption Is.
Agentforce is now switched on by default in most Salesforce orgs with the Winter ’27 release, and most teams still have not decided what to do about it. Mike Patchen, Agentforce FDE Lead at Cirrius Solutions, joins Greg Banks on Salesforce at Scale to explain what the platform actually is, what it costs, and why so many pilots never turn into adopted agents.
What you’ll learn:
- Why Agentforce is different from a chat window: deterministic answers built on the data and permissions already in your org, and a rough rule of thumb of about 10 cents per agent action to budget against
- What “on by default” with the Winter ’27 release does and does not mean, and why enabled is not the same as deployed or billed
- The habits that move an agent from deployed to adopted, starting with one measurable use case, clean data, and an agent contract that turns instructions into enforced guardrails
Who it’s for:
Salesforce admins, architects, and IT leaders who have been waiting for the Agentforce dust to settle, and business stakeholders who need a clear answer on cost before they say yes to a pilot.
Guest + credibility:
Mike Patchen is the Agentforce FDE Lead at Cirrius Solutions, with roughly 10 years in the Salesforce ecosystem and several years at Cirrius. He leads agent engagements with clients today, from use-case discovery through go-live and the monitoring that follows, and holds the team to his own standard: go live is just a milestone, adoption is the goal.
Primary CTA:
Pick one use case, decide how you will measure it, and then reach out to Cirrius Solutions to walk through the rest.
Recommended Links & Resources:
Mike Patchen on LinkedIn
Greg Banks on LinkedIn
Jason Fowler Music
Cirrius Solutions
Salesforce at Scale Episodes
Any Questions: Reach out to us at CirriusTalk@cirriussolutions.com
We cover
- AI is disrupting everything
- What is Agentforce
- Probablistic vs Deterministic
- What it costs: about $0.10 per action
- Agentforce is on by default in Winter 27
- Five keys to adoption: measurable outcomes and clean data
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction to Agent Force and Adoption Challenges
- 2:34AI is disrupting everything
- 3:45What is Agentforce
- 4:56Probablistic vs Deterministic
- 8:03What it costs: about $0.10 per action
- 8:59Agentforce is on by default in Winter 27
- 11:09Five keys to adoption: measurable outcomes and clean data
- 16:20Coworker and routing read-made agents
- 20:54How Cirrius approaches Agentforce Engagement
- 23:47Where to start: use case, agent contract and monitoring
- 26:02Proving Value vs Cost math
- 28:14Understanding Agent Contracts and Adoption
- 29:07Salesforce Scale and Measured Use Cases
Mike Patchen
Cirrius Solutions
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