Business adoption of AI agents tripled this year

# Agentic Enterprise Index Second Edition Source: [https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce/agentic-enterprise-index/](https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce/agentic-enterprise-index/)  The Index leverages AI usage data from a cohort of businesses, powered by Salesforce’s own proprietary data, to provide a first look at how companies are implementing agents, the value they’re starting to unlock, and the progress they are making toward becoming true agentic enterprises\. ## Introduction Over the past year, leading organizations are moving beyond building AI agents to deploying full agentic workforces — ones that work alongside humans to drive real business outcomes\. The Salesforce Agentic Enterprise Index \(Second Edition\) captures this shift in action: drawing on usage data from the world's \#1 Agentic CRM, it reveals how enterprises are scaling autonomous agents across every team and workflow — moving from proof of concept to measurable ROI at production scale\. ## Key Trends 1. **From Creation to Rapid Scale:**Businesses are no longer just testing the waters; they are expanding their AI capacity at unprecedented speeds:1. **3X Activated Agents:**The average number of activated agents per organization jumped from 5 in February 2025 to 13 by April 2026 2. **Rapid Creation to Use:**Enterprises are successfully creating agents into production in less than a week on average\. 2. **Driving Value and Trusted ROI:**As adoption skyrockets, agents are proving their worth by tackling foundational, multi\-step workflows and earning employee and customer trust:1. **Triple the Capability:**The unique skill set of an average agent tripled over the year, growing from 2 to 6 distinct business actions as they seamlessly step across traditional business boundaries\. 2. **Action\-Driven Value:**True business logic is taking center stage\. The "Action\-to\-Output" ratio is growing at a 15% Compound Monthly Growth Rate \(CMGR\), proving that agents are executing critical external tasks—like updating CRM records or managing API workflows—rather than just generating text\. 3. **Proven Impact:**This rapid evolution is translating directly to bottom\-line success\. From consumer industries experiencing a 4X higher growth rate during holiday surges to employee engagement jumping from 3 to 9 weekly sessions, the agentic workforce has officially become a habitual partner in driving enterprise ROI\. 3. **Industry Insights: Fast Volume vs\. Deliberate Sophistication:**Adoption patterns reveal a fascinating divide in how different sectors approach their AI strategy, separating them into two primary camps1. **Consumer Industries \(Fast, High Volume & Efficient\):**Retail agents alone skyrocketed 18x AWUs \(Agent Work Units\) during the analysis period and represent the majority of total output\. 2. **Regulated & Non\-Traditional Industries \(Deliberate & Sophisticated\):**Healthcare & Life Sciences, Financial Services and Manufacturing outpaced Technology and Retail by 66% on agent sophistication\. ## Methodology Powered by Agentforce and other Salesforce products, Salesforce analyzed and aggregated usage data of a cohort of businesses to uncover the true story of agents in the workforce\. Looking at trends from February 2025 to April 2026, The Salesforce Agentic Enterprise Index analyzes the activity and engagement of real businesses leveraging the power of AI agents to drive ROI\. To qualify for inclusion in the dataset, businesses needed to have activated agents in production every month across the analysis period\. These results are not indicative of Salesforce performance\. Additional data was sourced from Salesforce’s global proprietary research studies totaling 4,689 responses in May 2026\. Survey audiences include the USA, UK, France, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Italy  ## From**Creation**to**Rapid**Scale A major transformation is underway as businesses create and scale their agentic workforce\. Businesses scaled their agentic workforces from an average of 5 activated agents in February 2025 to 13 by April 2026—growing agent production nearly 3X at a 7% compound monthly growth rate\. ## Average activated agents per enterprise The data also showed that it takes businesses on average 1\.9 days to create an agent, decreasing 53% since February 2025\. 2 days to create an agent Once activated and in use, agents progressively take on more work\. The average actions per account has increased by a Compound Monthly Growth Rate \(CMGR\) of 31% in the last 15 months\. ## Share of agent actions completed per month  ## Driving**Value**and**Trusted**ROI ## Triple the Capability Agents are moving from simple tasks to handling autonomous, multi\-step workflows\. The average number of unique skills that each agent is able to act on rose from an average of 2 at the beginning of 2025 to 6 by the end of the year as seasonal demand grew in industries like Retail and Financial Services\. When demand for agents is highest, each agent takes on triple the capability to support businesses\. ## Average unique skills per agent  ## **Spotlight:** PenFed Credit Union Serving military families requires navigating strict compliance, security, and verification across every touchpoint\. - To automate service at scale, PenFed deployed Ace and is expanding into Echo—sophisticated member\-facing agents built on Agentforce\. - Secured behind logins, Ace evaluates balances, checks loan statuses, transfers funds, and answers queries from a curated knowledge base\. - Echo extends these multi\-action capabilities to voice, replacing legacy IVR and automated teller systems\. [Learn more](https://www.salesforce.com/customer-stories/pentagon-federal-credit-union/) Not only is the volume of unique skills rising, but agents are increasingly taking on secondary functions\. For example, service agents are taking commerce and marketing actions, expanding the versatility of what they can do for customers and businesses\. The data shows that employees are growing more confident about which actions they can entrust to agents, and agents are also acting on those tasks when conversations call for it\. ## Share of secondary functions performed by agents ## **Action\-Driven**Value The "Action\-to\-Output" ratio is growing at a 15% Compound Monthly Growth Rate \(CMGR\)\. This means agents are triggering external business logic rather than just generating text\. This ratio increases during times of seasonal demand\. ## Action to output ratio  ## **Spotlight:** Agentic Work Units As employees increasingly hand off complex tasks to AI agents, Salesforce developed a new way to measure that activity: the Agentic Work Unit \(AWU\)\. An AWU represents one discrete unit of work completed by an AI agent — a task reasoned through, a decision made, an action taken\. As of April 2026, Agentforce agents produced 734M AWUs \- increasing by 15% month\-over\-month\. As of April 2026, Agentforce agents’ AWU output is increasing by a 15% CMGR \(compound monthly growth rate\)\. ## Proven Employee Impact Employee engagement is deepening, with workers continuing to go back to agents each month\. The average employee user tripled their AI agent interactions over the analysis period\. ## Average weekly sessions per user  ## **Spotlight:**Slackbot Slackbot, Slack’s built\-in agent, became generally available in February 2026\. Users are averaging 68 sessions per week with Slack agents alone since general availability\. ## Proven Customer Impact Leveraging agents creates tangible results with customers\. Retailers that deployed AI agents during the holiday shopping season saw a 4X higher sales growth rate\. ## Y\-O\-Y online sales growth with and without shopper agents Even as the share of customer service sessions handled by agents increased by more than 170\-fold over five quarters, the rate of autonomous resolutions stayed steady\. Proving that agents can scale without degrading the customer experience\. ## Share of weekly agentic service conversations compared to autonomous resolution After they deploy AI agents, customer service organizations report that the \#1 improved KPI is customer satisfaction — ranking ahead of service rep productivity, average handle time, customer retention, and first\-response time\.  **Spotlight:**State of Service Report After deploying AI agents, customer service organizations report that the \#1 improved KPI is customer satisfaction — ranking ahead of service rep productivity, average handle time, customer retention, and first\-response time\. [Learn more](https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/ai-service-agents-improve-customer-satisfaction/) ## Shopper Insights Agents have built trust among shoppers \- increasing their confidence in purchase decisions through trusted recommendations\. **77%**of shoppers that engaged with on site branded shopper agents feel more confident with their purchase **74%**of shoppers trust the recommendations they receive from AI agents/agentic search  ## Industry Insights: Speed and Volume vs\. Deliberate Sophistication Consumer industries like retail and travel tend to deploy agents faster and at a higher volume\. Non\-traditional ‘AI’ or tech industries like healthcare and manufacturing are more deliberate about their deployments, leveraging fewer, but more sophisticated agents\. ## Consumer Industries Consumer industries dominate AWU output, with agents in those industries representing nearly a third of total monthly AWU output across all agents\.  ## **Spotlight:**Pandora The Retail & Consumer Goods and Travel sectors are using agentic technology to help scale to the end of year demand swings in particular, showing 100k\+ average actions per account by the end of the analysis period with a nearly 60% surge between Nov 2025 and Jan 2026\. Global jewelry brand Pandora faces dramatic surges in customer inquiries during peak shopping seasons like holidays and Valentine's Day\. To maintain its high\-touch, personalized experience during these high\-volume moments, Pandora deploys Gemma — an AI concierge powered by Agentforce\. By connecting directly to back\-end order systems and product catalogs, Gemma delivers fast, personalized support at scale\. During peak traffic, Gemma handles 60% of routine support requests while driving a 10% increase in Net Promoter Score \(NPS\), enabling human reps to focus on high\-touch, complex interactions\. ## Regulated Industries Regulated industries like Healthcare & Life Sciences put out a more modest monthly AWU number, but grew significantly over the analysis period\.  ## The Agent Sophistication Index To gauge the complexity of agent usage across industries, we established a "Sophistication Index" by mapping all agent actions into 5 progressive tiers of cognitive complexity: 1. Levels 1–3 \(Read, Coordinate, Synthesize\): Standard, low\-risk capabilities like looking up records, drafting emails, and summarizing documents\. 2. Levels 4–5 \(Write, Analyze, Parse\): High\-complexity capabilities like updating database fields or programmatically extracting nested parameters from raw user inputs\. By evaluating how many of these complexity levels agents in each industry actively use, the Sophistication Index highlights who is leveraging agents to take on a variety of complex tasks rather than just automating high volume tasks\. The analysis reveals that operationally complex, highly regulated fields build more advanced agent networks than traditional tech sectors\.  Driven by these intricate multi\-step workflows, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Financial Services and Manufacturing outpaced Technology and Retail on the index, scoring 66% higher \(40\-50 vs\. 30\)\.  ## Learning for Businesses ### 1\. Agents can do more than you think Businesses can build a more versatile, interconnected digital workforce by trusting agents to take on adjacent responsibilities outside their original scope\. ### 2\. Leverage seasonal surges with agents to drive top\-line business revenue Particularly in consumer industries, agents support growth during particularly busy times \(holiday, tax season, etc\) ### 3\. Integrate agents into daily communication channels The data shows employees are engaging in more sessions with agents than ever before, particularly in channels they use throughout the day\. ## Ready to take the next step with Agentforce?