Salesforce Industry Clouds Spotlight: Agentforce Communications Cloud

Salesforce commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Industry Cloud.¹ This spotlight will focus on the communications sector’s use of Salesforce Agentforce Communications Cloud and its value to these organizations based on the experience of the following interviewees:

• A director of technology at a global communications provider with $125 billion in annual revenue.

• A senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider with $1.2 billion in annual revenue.

Communications service providers (CSPs) operate in capital‑intensive environments that can serve B2C and B2B customers across multiple channels. These organizations manage intricate product catalogs, pricing and promotions, order capture, provisioning, billing, and field service operations on a massive scale. As digital channels expand and customer expectations rise, CSPs face increasing pressure to modernize legacy environments that were not designed for omnichannel execution or rapid innovation.

The interviewees described previous environments dominated by legacy and mainframe‑centric systems that constrained agility and drove up costs. For example, the senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider described how limitations in their legacy order management stack directly affected day‑to‑day operations, explaining, “In the legacy stack before Salesforce Agentforce Communications Cloud, we probably had 10 different handoffs between teams just to get a technician out to a customer.” These sequential handoffs increased error rates, delayed installations, and created a poor experience for customers and employees.

Leaders at the global communications provider similarly recognized that legacy platforms were becoming increasingly misaligned with the pace of the business. Rather than focusing on whether systems technically functioned, they went further and evaluated whether the systems could support speed to market, automation, and consistent cross‑channel execution at scale. This shift in perspective set the stage for a broader modernization effort.

Investment Drivers For The Communications Sector

The director of technology at a global communications provider said their organization adopted Salesforce Agentforce Communications Cloud as part of a multiyear effort to replace legacy platforms and reduce total cost of ownership across sales and service operations. The interviewee described owning the strategy and implementation for software used by tens of thousands of frontline employees and emphasized the importance of consolidating onto a standardized, extensible platform that could support ongoing innovation rather than continuing to invest in aging systems.

The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider said their organization specifically selected Salesforce Agentforce Communications Cloud for its ability to automate end‑to‑end order management, an area where previous internal and third‑party initiatives had failed. The interviewee explained that earlier attempts to build similar capabilities had cost millions of dollars without ever reaching production. Agentforce Communications Cloud, in contrast, delivered a proven, production‑ready foundation for product catalog, CPQ, and order orchestration within a single platform.

Overall, the interviewees’ organizations invested in Salesforce Agentforce Communications Cloud to address foundational challenges related to legacy system complexity, high operating costs, slow go‑to‑market execution, and operational inefficiency. The following summarize the main investment drivers:

• Legacy platforms with high cost and low agility. The interviewees’ organizations relied on systems that were expensive to operate and difficult to evolve. The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider said their mainframe‑based order management environment imposed structural constraints and noted: “Everything was very sequential. That was just the limitation of our order management platform on the mainframe.” These limitations made it difficult to introduce automation or parallel processing, even for routine changes.
  The director of technology at a global communications provider said their leadership team faced a different but related challenge. The organization operated a complex mix of third-party‑based systems, third-party disparate tools, and homegrown applications that had accumulated over time. While these systems technically functioned, they carried high total cost of ownership and required significant effort to maintain. The organization’s leaders recognized that continued investment in these platforms would consume resources without delivering the agility required to compete effectively.

• Inability to launch products and promotions quickly. Speed to market was a critical driver. The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider described how launching new consumer offerings or bundles on the legacy stack could take six months to a year, limiting the organization’s ability to compete in a fast‑moving market. The director of technology at a global communications provider said they faced similar friction, where product launches required coordination across numerous systems and configurations required weeks rather than days.

• Manual processes and operational inefficiency. Legacy environments required extensive human intervention across order capture, provisioning, inventory updates, and dispatch. The senior vice president of IT at a regional communications provider said residential orders moved sequentially through multiple teams, increasing error rates and rework. Their leadership team sought a platform that could automate these workflows end‑to‑end rather than relying on manual coordination.
  The director of technology at a global communications provider said their organization also experienced operational inefficiencies driven by fragmented systems and manual coordination across sales, service, and fulfillment. Their leadership team recognized that these inefficiencies scaled poorly as transaction volumes increased, creating operational risk and limiting the organization’s ability to grow without adding headcount.

Agentforce Communications Cloud Features

The interviewees’ organizations chose to invest in Agentforce Communications Cloud for the following reasons:

• Unified product catalogs, pricing, and promotions across channels. Agentforce Communications Cloud enabled the interviewees’ organizations to standardize how they defined and surfaced products, pricing, and promotions across digital, retail, and contact‑center channels. Before the investment, legacy systems and channel‑specific logic resulted in inconsistent offers, customer confusion, and downstream remediation. The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider described the postimplementation state as a deliberate shift in consistency. They said, “We moved to one catalog, one pricing, one promotion [model] across all channels.” This unified model ensured that customers saw the same offers regardless of how they engaged with the organization, reducing disputes and order fallout.
  The director of technology at a global communications provider said standardizing catalogs and pricing logic also simplified governance and reduced operational risk. Rather than managing duplicative configurations across multiple systems, teams could introduce and manage offers centrally, improving control while accelerating execution. This consistency served as a prerequisite for faster launches and more reliable fulfillment.

• End‑to‑end order management automation. Order management automation was a defining feature, particularly for the regional communications provider’s consumer-focused business. In its legacy environment, orders moved sequentially through multiple teams, requiring manual coordination at each step. Agentforce Communications Cloud replaced this model with automated orchestration that spanned order capture, validation, provisioning, and installation.
  This automation eliminated manual handoffs, reduced errors, and improved first‑time‑right installations. For interviewees’ organizations, removing human intervention from routine order flows not only reduced cost but also improved customer experience by shortening cycle times and reducing the likelihood of rework or cancellations.

• Guided selling, eligibility validation, and reduced order fallout. Agentforce Communications Cloud supported guided selling by validating eligibility, pricing, and promotions in real time at the point of sale. This capability ensured that agents and digital channels could only submit valid orders, reducing downstream fallout and callbacks. While legacy systems allowed invalid or incomplete orders to progress, Agentforce Communications Cloud enforced business rules upfront, improving order quality and agent confidence.
  The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider said this capability directly supported reductions in pre‑install churn and remediation. By preventing invalid orders from entering the fulfillment process, the organization reduced delays that previously led to customer cancellations and credits. The interviewee linked these improvements to revenue protection, describing the financial impact of avoiding these issues as having high monetary value.

• Analytics, auditability, and operational transparency. The interviewees highlighted Agentforce Communications Cloud’s analytics and audit capabilities as critical enablers of operational control. By centralizing order, pricing, and change data into a single platform, Agentforce Communications Cloud replaced manual reporting and evidence gathering with real‑time visibility.
  Beyond time savings, centralized analytics improved day‑to‑day decision‑making. Leaders could monitor order progress, fallout, and performance metrics in near real time, which enabled faster intervention when issues arose and supported more data‑driven management across sales and fulfillment operations.

• Platform extensibility, integration, and long‑term scalability. The interviewees emphasized the importance of Agentforce Communications Cloud as an extensible platform that could integrate with existing OSS, BSS, billing, and network systems while supporting future innovation. The director of technology at a global communications provider said that they positioned Agentforce Communications Cloud as the cornerstone of a broader modernization strategy aimed at reducing technical debt and consolidating onto a standardized stack capable of supporting tens of thousands of users.
  The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider said that previous attempts to build or buy comparable capabilities had failed, costing millions of dollars but never reaching production. They recounted: “[The alternative] was a very similar product to Salesforce Agentforce Communications Cloud. It was very complex and it failed. It never went live. We spent millions of dollars.” In contrast, this interviewee said that Agentforce Communications Cloud offered a proven, industry‑specific foundation that reduced implementation risk while providing a clear path to scale automation, onboard partners, and introduce new services without linear increases in operational complexity.

Key Results For The Communications Sector

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations include:

Operational efficiency and employee productivity. After implementing Agentforce Communications Cloud, the interviewees’ organizations reduced manual work and streamlined operations by automating complex order flows, standardizing processes, and retiring legacy systems that required constant human intervention.

• Eliminated manual handoffs and reduced operational friction in order fulfillment. The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider said that residential orders previously moved through a fragmented process involving roughly 10 separate handoffs between teams before they could dispatch a technician. Each handoff introduced delays, rework, and the risk of error. With Agentforce Communications Cloud automating order capture, validation, and orchestration, this process became fully automated from e‑commerce submission through installation. Eliminating these touchpoints reduced cycle times, improved first‑time‑right installations, and lowered operational overhead.

• Improved productivity across IT and support teams. The director of technology at a global communications provider said that consolidating workflows and retiring legacy platforms resulted in an estimated 10% to 20% impact to IT and support FTEs. Resources previously dedicated to maintaining aging systems were repurposed to higher‑value activities such as platform optimization, analytics, and new capability development. This shift improved overall workforce utilization without requiring proportional headcount growth.

• Reduced training time and accelerated employee ramp‑up. Interviewees said that simplifying frontline tooling and workflows also reduced training burden. The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider noted that new hire training time for call center agents had declined by at least 50%. Previously, agents had to learn multiple systems and manual workarounds; with Agentforce Communications Cloud providing guided workflows and a unified interface, employees reached productivity faster and focused on customer interactions rather than system navigation. The interviewee said: “Agents are taking the time now to train more on products and sales tactics and customer service — soft skills they need — [with] less focus on the systems. That was huge.”

Faster time to market and increased organizational agility. The interviewees said that Agentforce Communications Cloud significantly improved their organizations’ ability to launch new products, promotions, and bundles, enabling them to respond more quickly to market changes and competitive pressure.

• Accelerated offer launches at enterprise scale. The director of technology at a global communications provider reported being three to five times faster in launching new offers after implementing Agentforce Communications Cloud. Product launches that previously required weeks of coordination across numerous systems could now be executed in days. This acceleration improved responsiveness and reduced reliance on long planning cycles.

• Transformed go-to-market speed for consumer offerings. The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional provider said that launching new consumer products or bundles on their legacy mainframe environment could take six months to a year. They described an improved experience with Agentforce Communications Cloud: “I would say [we’ve had] at least a 75% increase in speed to market for our product rollouts. We bundle with [provider], so our customers get a discount through our relationship with [provider]. Obviously, it’s a third party, but being able to launch something like that is significantly faster.”

• Removed structural bottlenecks through parallel processing. Work had to occur sequentially on legacy platforms, with each step depending on the one before. Agentforce Communications Cloud enabled parallel execution across eligibility checks, pricing, provisioning, and fulfillment, fundamentally changing how quickly interviewees’ organizations could introduce and scale new offerings.

Revenue protection, cost reduction, and growth enablement. Improvements in automation, consistency, and speed translated directly into financial impact, supporting revenue protection and incremental growth.

• Reduced revenue leakage and costly remediation. By standardizing product catalogs, pricing, and promotions across channels, Agentforce Communications Cloud reduced order fallout, overcrediting, and downstream remediation. As the senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider explained, “We’re looking at 1% or 2% gross revenue leakage prevented, and the customer onboarding process is 30% faster.” Automation also reduced pre-install churn, as customers were less likely to cancel during long or error-prone provisioning cycles.

• Improved retention, cross-sell, and ARPU. The senior vice president of IT customer support systems at a regional communications provider said that improved bundling and customer-centric selling enabled by Agentforce Communications Cloud contributed to a 5% to 10% improvement in gross customer churn and a 2% to 4% increase in ARPU. Guided selling and unified catalogs allowed agents to confidently recommend appropriate services, improving customer experience and revenue outcomes.

• Delivered a net positive revenue impact at enterprise scale. The director of technology at a global communications provider said, “We’re tracking toward a 10% to 15% increase in revenue overall by being able to go to market faster.” While multiple initiatives contributed, this interviewee cited Agentforce Communications Cloud as a core enabler by reducing friction across sales and fulfillment.

• Enabled substantial long-term cost savings through legacy decommissioning. The director of technology at a global communications provider projected: “It was two to four times more expensive to continue with the legacy system. So that would equate close to $30 million to $60 million per year of net savings once we’re off the legacy system.” These savings reflect reduced operating costs and avoided future investment in systems that could not support modern communications workflows.

Reduced compliance effort and improved audit readiness. In addition to operational and financial benefits, Agentforce Communications Cloud improved compliance and governance by centralizing data and improving traceability.

• Reduced audit preparation time and disruption. The director of technology at a global communications provider reported: “We see close to a 30% to 40% time savings per audit. Before, documents were pulled manually across different CRMs, different billing platforms. Now we can pull them from one single entity and see the end-to-end audit trail that happens in the Agentforce Communications Cloud.” As a result, their auditors and internal teams no longer needed to manually gather evidence from multiple platforms, reducing disruption to day‑to‑day operations and lowering the cost of compliance activities.

• Improved governance through end‑to‑end traceability. A complete audit trail across orders, pricing changes, and promotions improved transparency and reduced risk in a highly regulated environment where accuracy and accountability are critical.

Scalable foundation for long‑term transformation. Beyond near‑term efficiency gains, Agentforce Communications Cloud established a scalable platform that supported ongoing modernization and growth.

• Enabled growth without linear increases in staff. Automating complex workflows and standardizing catalogs and APIs allowed the interviewees’ organizations to scale product offerings, partner ecosystems, and customer volumes without proportional increases in headcount.

• Positioned the organizations for continuous innovation. Interviewees said that Agentforce Communications Cloud served as the cornerstone of broader transformation strategies focused on reducing technical debt and enabling advanced analytics, AI-driven decision support, and new digital engagement models over time without rearchitecting core systems.
  Additionally, interviewees anticipated using Agentforce Communications Cloud’s industry-specific agents to autonomously handle complex service and sales tasks, such as resolving billing disputes, monitoring real-time network use against compliance criteria, and generating in-field personalized upsell recommendations.