From Microsoft's new-look AI agent to a Lenovo customer service AI chatbot weakness, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Microsoft Steps Toward “Fully Autonomous Contact Centers” with a New-Look AI Agent
Microsoft has announced its new-look Customer Intent Agent in a move it describes as “accelerating the journey toward fully autonomous contact centers.”
The tech giant first unveiled the Customer Intent Agent, available across its Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Customer Service offerings, in January 2025.
Upon the original announcement, Microsoft showcased how the AI Agent scans service conversations to pinpoint the contact center’s core demand drivers, or ‘intents’.
From there, it clusters transcripts, case notes, and summaries to map each intent and outline the steps to a successful resolution.
That intelligence then plugs into other AI agents, automating knowledge article creation, informing self-service interactions, and boosting the agent-facing Copilot.
Meanwhile, the Customer Intent Agent keeps working in the background, unpacking emerging customer intents, enabling the creation of new knowledge content, and expanding the scope for contact automation (Read more...).
Salesforce Makes Changes to Its Agentforce Pricing Model (Again!)
Salesforce is continuing to tinker with Agentforce’s pricing model.
The goal remains the same: to reduce barriers to entry and get more of its 150,000+ customers on the AI agent platform.
As of May 2025, 8,000 of those customers are currently leveraging Agentforce.
Hoping to boost those numbers, Salesforce’s latest move is to introduce ‘pay-as-you-go’ and ‘pre-commit’ payment options.
Along with the pre-existing ‘pre-purchase’ option, Salesforce now offers three distinct ways to pay for Agentforce.
When sharing the new payment options, Bill Patterson, EVP of Corporate Strategy at Salesforce, underlined how they pave a path for “businesses of all sizes” to start testing and deploying AI agents. He said:
We’re removing the friction and lowering the barrier to entry so every company, whether they’re a long-time customer or trying Salesforce for the first time, can get started and see immediate value from digital labor with Agentforce.
The updates follow the introduction of that ‘pre-purchase’, consumption-based pricing model earlier this year (Read more...).
Lenovo’s Customer Service AI Chatbot Got Tricked Into Revealing Sensitive Information. Here’s How
Lenovo is the latest high-profile brand to have a security flaw exposed in its AI customer service chatbot.
