Salesforce users grumble after Agentforce AI replaces search on some help pages

This is one way to add a lot of AI users in a hurry, which Wall Street wants to see

Salesforce developers have called for the SaaS-y CRM giant to wind back a change that saw the AI-powered Agentforce bot replace basic search functions on some online help pages.

A thread on Salesforce’s ideaexchange forums titled “Bring Back Search on Salesforce Help” states: On ‘29th September Search on Salesforce Help’ was removed and laments “Search has been replaced with Agentforce which can produce unreliable results and takes longer to find the information you need.”

Salesforce apparently made the change on Monday, and it currently appears that ideaexchange users must use Benioff's bot on certain sections of the website. Salesforce has not replied to our request for comment on the matter yet.

Agentforce is a blanket brand for Salesforce's agentic AI technology, based around the Atlas Reasoning Engine from Salesforce's AI research group. Over the last year, Salesforce has gone all-in on Agentforce and agentic AI in general, not just as a method of getting reducing headcount or helping Uncle Sam replace government workers. It has also been using AI as an excuse to jack up prices – whether customers want it or not – in an effort to boost revenue.

Suffice it to say that if you're one of the expected 40,000 or so people planning to attend Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this month, Agentforce hype will be unavoidable.

Clearly, however, not everyone is keen.

"Earlier today, when I was on a Salesforce help doc and couldn’t find the search bar, I thought I was going mad. Isn’t it normally on this page? Then when I realized it wasn’t just me, I really did get mad," wrote Salesforce consultant Jason Zeikowitz in a LinkedIn post.

"The search bar is quick and practical. It cuts to the chase as opposed to having an agentic conversation. It’s like replacing a mouse with a mouth. You know what I mean if you’ve ever tried to guide the person sharing their screen to click the right thing. 'Click the tab. To the left. More left!'"

Similar comments are filling up conversations on Reddit, with more than a few customers and developers complaining that the shift will make their lives harder and that the search results produced by Agentforce are often repetitive or just plain wrong.

There's also a certain amount of cynicism over the move. Salesforce is very keen to shift to an AI-first platform and some posters believe the cloud company discontinued these search functions deliberately to force adoption of Agentforce and drive up reportable adoption figures. ®