This year will see businesses transition from experimentation with artificial intelligence (AI) to full-scale implementation, as they work towards a future where humans and agents drive customer success together with AI, data and action.
Salesforce, an international AI customer relationship management platform, has identified the top AI trends that will shape the dynamic business landscape in Thailand in 2025.
In 2024, we entered the third wave of AI with autonomous AI agents that can make decisions and take action without human intervention -- just as AI was meant to be. This year, it's about delivering on that promise, as purpose-driven AI agents are designed to address specific workflow needs and deliver results that will help organisations move beyond the experimentation stage.
"AI agents are a step change in capability for business, the means to boost productivity, deliver personalised customer experiences and drive growth," said David Mould, country chief technology officer and solutions director for Salesforce Thailand and Vietnam.
"2025 is set to be a pivotal moment in the evolution of autonomous AI, as more global and Thai businesses invest in AI agents and start to receive the tangible and measurable benefits this technology offers."
TOP TRENDS FOR 2025
1. Autonomous agents provide an opportunity for topline growth. In the past two years, businesses have focused on cost-cutting measures in response to global economic uncertainties and slowing growth. The availability of autonomous agents today has created more opportunities for businesses to drive topline growth as they now have the ability to bring together structured and unstructured data from across the organisation. This opens up avenues to foster deeper customer relationships that can generate new revenue streams.
Autonomous agents can significantly impact a company's growth trajectory. Take a bank that works with thousands of business clients as an example. An initial analysis may lead the bank to think that most of its customers are small firms with limited spending. However, a deeper look can reveal these businesses are spreading their spending across banks.
It's extremely difficult to turn the workforce around to deepen engagement with all customers, but it can be made significantly easier if they can deploy autonomous agents to maintain consistent customer engagement without constant human oversight. Agents operate 24/7, providing unprecedented coverage.
2. Out-of-the-box AI/agentic solutions and unified data will underpin AI success. In the race to operationalise AI, the winners will be those who forgo DIY solutions in favour of out-of-the-box solutions that offer superior speed, deployment and accuracy.
Businesses that adopt out-of-the-box solutions can focus on AI deployment and achieve immediate impact and value. In contrast, those who attempt to take the DIY route often face setbacks in the form of hidden costs and a slow realisation of AI capabilities.
3. For Thailand, by Thailand -- an organic AI ecosystem emerges. AI is ushering in one of the biggest technological shifts of our generation, creating new services, roles and industries. Just as the invention of smartphones and mobile applications created a thriving ecosystem of app developers, the growth of AI platforms is fostering a new generation of AI developers.
This drives innovation and opens the pathway for local talent to develop AI tools tailored to meet Thailand's unique needs, whether it's small language models that support Thai language, or advanced models that tackle specific business challenges for big industries such as travel and tourism.
4. AI agents disrupt traditional service models with scalable capacity, intelligence and personalised experiences. In a country like Thailand with lower labour costs, businesses often hire additional service staff as a quick fix for improving the customer experience. However, increasing headcount alone doesn't necessarily improve problem resolution or overall customer satisfaction.
AI agents provide a fundamentally different approach by autonomously handling requests and enhancing customer interactions in ways that go beyond scaling capacity. This isn't about efficiency alone, but delivering high-quality customer service. AI agents can tap real-time data to provide context-aware support, making decisions and taking action as customer needs arise.
Take for example Heathrow airport in London. As one of the busiest airports in the world with an average of 1,300 flights a day to 230 destinations, Heathrow faces a massive influx of international travellers during peak holiday seasons. Using Agentforce, Heathrow will use real-time data from its knowledge base and flight information application programming interfaces to respond to thousands of traveller questions instantly and simultaneously.
With AI agents such as these embedded directly into workflows, businesses can reimagine customer service, delivering faster and more accurate responses without increasing complexity or requiring extensive training.
5. Agents building agents and talking to agents will become commonplace. Just as organisations have employees specialised in specific functions, AI agents will soon be assigned unique roles within a network. These agents will work alongside human employees, communicate with other agents and create new agents as business needs evolve. Each agent will have a defined function, allowing the network to handle a wide range of tasks efficiently.
In this agent network, meta-agents will be crucial, coordinating actions across other agents to keep workflows seamless. For instance, a concierge agent might interact with users, guiding them on tasks it can assist with and providing updates on task progress. An orchestration agent would assess user needs and route requests to the appropriate agent, ensuring tasks are managed effectively. This setup enables collaboration on platforms like Slack, where human employees and AI agents can interact as a unified team, enhancing responsiveness and coordination.
This new era of agents will redefine collaboration, creating a blended environment where humans and agents work side-by-side to enhance productivity, improve customer experiences and support business growth through streamlined operations.
