Australia's productivity problem: there's an AI agent for that

AU Financial Review

2 days ago

Most of us share the experience of seemingly endless admin and mundane tasks getting in the way of what matters. Our own research has found employees spend 41 per cent of their day on low value and repetitive tasks.
There is a better way. We have thousands of companies using Agentforce today, blending human and AI agent teams to deliver new efficiency and productivity gains.
Urban Rest uses AI agents to provide 24/7 support to its guests, handling 30 per cent of enquiries and delivering a 50 per cent increase in operations team productivity.
Fisher & Paykel is using AI agents to empower customers, with 45 per cent of service bookings now completed online, and a 50 per cent reduction in call handling times.
Using AI agents, hipages has turned a three-hour process for verifying tradies' licences into a near-real-time process.
We've also seen the benefits internally. Agentforce now handles over 32,000 customer conversations for Salesforce per week, including routine tasks like password resets, with a resolution rate of 84 per cent. Today, only 2 per cent of customers need to speak to a human to get the service they need to get on with their day.
Preparing companies for digital labour
Agentic AI will change how companies get work done. Offloading repetitive tasks that are ripe for automation to agents means employees can focus on higher-order thinking, develop new skills, and focus on uniquely human contributions.
A recent Salesforce survey of chief human resources officers from across the world found 80 per cent believe most workforces will have humans and AI agents working together within the next five years.
Accordingly, four in five HR chiefs are, or are planning to, reskill their employees to be more effective and capable in businesses shaped by AI agents. Most of these leaders also agree that soft skills will be even more critical as humans work alongside agents.
Training programs like Salesforce's free Trailhead AI certification can help workers develop new skills in emerging roles such as AI trainers and agent builders.
Trust and safety must be embedded to ensure employee and customer confidence in agentic AI. Strong data protection is critical, as well as tools that provide transparency and empower employees to make well-informed choices about what to delegate to AI.
The customer experience impact
While the productivity of employees is critical, we also need to consider just how much time Australian consumers lose to navigating, at times, complex business processes and just plain waiting around.
Waiting on hold. Waiting for a quote. Waiting for replies to very simple questions.
With more customers using consumer-grade generative AI apps, and companies increasingly adopting agentic AI support for their teams, there's a growing gap between the best possible customer experience and the experience delivered by laggards.
For example, TripADeal uses Agentforce for its virtual travel consultant, to help customers plan their holidays, answer questions, and recommend deals.
It's AI agent delivers quick, accurate responses to straightforward questions and seamlessly hands over to human travel experts for more complex enquiries and to make a booking. The agent has meant TripADeal's team can focus on delivering exceptional travel experiences.
Even better, it was delivered in five weeks from proof of concept to deployment.
While there's no single answer to tackling Australia's productivity problem, agentic AI should play an important role.
The Business Council of Australia's Accelerating Australia's AI Agenda report is an important contribution to this discussion and aligns closely with our view on the way forward.
We also look forward to engaging with the Productivity Commission's Harnessing Data and Digital Technology inquiry.
Australian leaders must grasp this opportunity. Continuing to do things the old way will not shift the needle on productivity.
In the agentic AI era, employees have access to tools to greatly increase their productivity and reshape their roles, and companies can access digital labour that is elastic and abundant, allowing them to grow and scale like never before.