3 Ways AI Agents Bridge the Gap Between Remote and In-Office Workers

3 Ways AI Agents Bridge the Gap Between Remote and In-Office Workers

By automating routine tasks, coordinating workflows, and facilitating real-time communication, agents mitigate many of the challenges that arise with hybrid work teams.

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The push/pull of hybrid work continues, with more business leaders planning to require workers to return to offices. Right now, though, one quarter of U.S. workers - more than 35 million people - work remotely at least part of the time. Many workers are resisting the call to return, even as business leaders say in-person attendance is necessary to succeed. But here's something to consider: The very things that some business leaders worry are lost with remote or hybrid work - productivity, innovation, collaboration - can be significantly enhanced with autonomous agents.

Autonomous agents are an advanced form of artificial intelligence (AI) that can understand and respond to inquiries without human intervention. Unlike bots, which follow predefined rules, autonomous agents operate in a dynamic environment, making them ideal for carrying out complex, multi step tasks. This capability is particularly valuable in the context of AI and remote work, where seamless communication and efficient task management are crucial. Agentforce is Salesforce's suite of tools, services, and actions to help companies quickly build and deploy such agents.

While agents are most often discussed in customer service or sales scenarios, they'll be transformative for routine work across the enterprise, as well. Agents will streamline communication, automate tasks, and bridge gaps between remote and in-office workers. They'll redefine not only how individuals work, but how collaboration happens.

By automating routine tasks, facilitating communication, and maintaining a constant presence, agents empower remote workers to stay in sync with their in-office counterparts, reshaping how they work together, no matter where they are. Here are three key ways agents help hybrid teams work better together.

1. Agents make workers more productive

Collaboration tools like Slack, Dropbox, and Google Workspace helped enable remote work, but AI and remote work are evolving together in exciting ways through intelligent, dynamic, personalized AI agents.

Agents can automate many tasks including scheduling meetings, generating summaries, writing emails, doing research, and analyzing data. These are important, time-consuming things that an agent can do for workers, freeing them up to collaborate with colleagues wherever they may be, and focus on more strategic work. And because agents built with Agentforce have access to Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) data like marketing, sales, service, commerce and industries, they provide real-time, data-driven insights, grounded in your business context, so teams and agents can make informed decisions and take action within the CRM environment.

Let's say a manager wants to automate every in-person meeting, and have a follow-up summary. They'd create an agent that generates the summary, composes an email, and sends it to all stakeholders whether they attended in person, remotely, or not at all. This is the next wave of automation that lets employees automate more-complex tasks and free up their time for higher-impact work.

Mick Costigan, vice president of Salesforce Futures, recently said, "Right now we're seeing little dollops of AI productivity being added to existing processes, but over time what we expect is that work will truly be transformed."

2. Agents facilitate real-time communication and collaboration

Much has been said about the benefit of spontaneous hallway conversations at work, and what's lost when hybrid workers don't have those informal interactions to spark creativity, build relationships, and facilitate quick problem-solving.

Agents help far-flung teams overcome this. They intelligently filter and prioritize notifications, ensuring that team members are alerted to important updates or messages without being overwhelmed by constant pings. They also provide real-time updates and context around ongoing projects, keeping team members informed about developments and allowing them to have relevant discussions as they happen.

Adam Evans, senior vice president of product, Salesforce AI platform, painted this picture: You wrap up a morning sales call, and your agent has already summarized the conversation, updated your CRM, sent action items to your marketing colleagues, flagged upsell opportunities, and scheduled follow-up meetings - all without you lifting a finger.

This example shows how context-aware agents can enhance real-time communication and collaboration among dispersed teams.

3. Agents help manage project workflows

Your team works in three different countries, but that doesn't mean you can't work cohesively. AI and remote work go hand in hand here, as agents work 24/7 to bridge some of the inherent time zone challenges international teams face. How? They help manage project workflows by tracking progress, assigning tasks, and sending reminders, helping teams stay aligned and on top of deadlines, responsibilities, and updates.

Consider a team working on a product launch. An agent monitors goals and deadlines, automatically assigning tasks based on people's availability, skills, and workload. If a product designer in one country completes a task, the agent reassigns the next task to a designer in another country, ensuring continuous progress.

The agent tracks progress, and notifies team members of potential blockers. It may even suggest solutions based on similar past problems. The agent can adjust deadlines and coordinate communication by scheduling meetings.

Agents will transform work, and sooner than you think

For all the talk of technology making us faster, there are still some very human blockers to getting work done. Maybe you spaced out in a meeting, or held up a workflow because you forgot to respond to a Slack message. By automating routine tasks, coordinating workflows, and facilitating real-time communication, agents mitigate many of the challenges that arise with hybrid work teams. They keep everyone aligned by managing schedules, tracking progress, and distributing information, so no one is left out of the loop.

Perhaps most importantly, agents are workhorses. They work around the clock, ensuring that time zone differences, busy schedules, and shifting priorities don't get in the way of collaboration.

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Lisa Lee is a contributing editor at Salesforce. She has written about technology and its impact on business for more than 25 years. Prior to Salesforce, she was an award-winning journalist with Forbes.com and other publications.