A modern guide to salesforce automation in 2025

Salesforce is an absolute powerhouse. For a lot of us, it’s the central nervous system for sales, service, and all our customer data. To keep things running smoothly, automation isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s pretty much essential.

But let’s be honest. While Salesforce gives you some powerful built-in tools, teams often get tangled in complexity, struggle with data stored in different places, and face some seriously hefty price tags, especially when trying to automate customer support.

This guide will walk you through the world of native Salesforce automation, point out where it often falls short, and show you a newer, AI-driven way to connect all the dots.

What is Salesforce automation?

Salesforce automation, sometimes called Sales Force Automation (SFA), is really just about using technology to get rid of the manual, repetitive tasks that eat up your team’s day. The goal is simple: free people up to focus on what they were actually hired to do, build relationships, close deals, and solve tricky customer problems, instead of getting buried in admin work.

Salesforce gives you a few core tools to do this, each with a specific job:

• Flow Builder: This is the main, modern tool for building complex, guided processes without having to be a developer.

• Process Builder: You might still run into this one. It’s an older tool for automating workflows, but Flow Builder has largely taken over.

• Workflow Rules: The most basic of the bunch, good for simple "if this happens, then do that" automations.

• Apex: This is Salesforce’s own programming language. It’s what you turn to when you need deep, custom automation that the other tools just can’t handle.

These tools are great for tasks where all the information lives neatly inside Salesforce. But as you probably know, that’s rarely the full picture.

The native tools for Salesforce automation

Salesforce gives you a solid starting toolkit for automation, but it’s important to understand what each tool does best and where you’ll hit a wall.

Salesforce Flow Builder

Salesforce Flow is the star of the show for low-code automation. It gives you a visual canvas to map out everything from a simple record update to a complex, multi-step customer onboarding process. For example, you could build a flow that automatically creates a follow-up task for a sales rep and pings the team’s Slack channel whenever a deal is marked as "Closed Won."

It’s powerful, for sure. But building and maintaining these flows takes real training and a good grasp of how Salesforce organizes data. It’s not something you can just jump into and figure out in an afternoon.

A screenshot of the Salesforce Flow Builder, the primary tool for native Salesforce automation.

Einstein AI

Einstein is Salesforce’s built-in AI, made to help your team by offering up predictions and recommendations. You’ll find it in features like "Opportunity Scoring," which guesses how likely a deal is to close, or "Next Best Action," which suggests what a rep should do next.

Here’s the catch: Einstein AI is trained almost entirely on the data that lives inside your Salesforce instance. It has no clue what’s in your company’s Confluence wiki, your internal Google Docs, or that really useful troubleshooting guide your engineering team wrote. Most of your team’s actual knowledge is completely invisible to it. On top of that, the best AI features are usually locked away in the most expensive subscription plans.

Salesforce's Einstein AI uses data within the CRM to provide recommendations and scores, a core part of its native Salesforce automation.

Apex code for custom automation

When the visual tools aren’t enough, there’s Apex. It’s how you get full customization, letting you build just about anything you can dream up on the platform.

The downside? It requires developers. This makes any custom automation expensive to build and slow to update. If your support team needs a quick change to a workflow, they have to get in line for developer time, which creates a huge bottleneck for teams trying to move quickly.

Limitations of native Salesforce automation for support teams

While the built-in tools are fine for managing data within the CRM, they start to show their cracks when you apply them to the messy reality of customer support.

Your actual knowledge is scattered everywhere

This is the single biggest problem. The answers your customers need are almost never sitting in just one place. Native Salesforce automation hits a brick wall when a question requires information from outside the CRM.

Just think about a typical support question. A customer asks something technical, and the answer is spread across:

• A detailed guide your engineers wrote in Confluence.

• A new return policy outlined in a Google Doc.

• A quick pricing update that was just posted in a Slack channel.

• A specific product dimension listed on your Shopify store page.

The built-in Salesforce tools can’t connect those dots. So your support agents are right back where they started: manually digging for answers across a dozen different tabs. It kind of defeats the whole purpose of automation, doesn’t it?

A workflow diagram showing how native Salesforce automation is limited to data within the CRM and cannot access scattered knowledge.

Complex setup and inflexible workflows

Building good automation in Salesforce isn’t a five-minute job; it’s a full-blown project. It takes time, expertise, and a lot of planning. This is a world away from modern AI tools that are built to be fast and simple.

For example, there’s no easy way to test a new automation on thousands of your past support tickets to see how it would have performed. You can’t really simulate its impact before you set it live with real customers. This lack of a safe testing ground means teams often launch new automations with their fingers crossed, just hoping it doesn’t create a frustrating experience for customers.

The high cost of real intelligence

As we touched on earlier, if you want Salesforce’s best AI and automation features, you have to be ready to pay up. These features are often bundled only in the top-tier Enterprise and Unlimited plans, which can run you hundreds of dollars per user, every month. This puts truly smart automation out of reach for many small and mid-sized businesses that can’t justify that kind of price jump.

A modern approach: Integrating AI agents with Salesforce automation

So, what’s the alternative? It’s not about ditching Salesforce. It’s about making it smarter by adding a flexible AI layer that connects to everything else.

Instead of counting on a tool that only understands your CRM, you can integrate a dedicated AI agent that learns from all of your company’s knowledge, no matter where it is.

This is what tools like eesel AI are built for. They act as an intelligent brain for your whole support operation. You can connect it to Salesforce, your helpdesk (like Zendesk or Freshdesk), and all those scattered knowledge sources, and get it up and running in minutes.

Modern AI agents connect to all your knowledge sources, creating a more powerful and flexible Salesforce automation solution.

This approach fixes the limitations we just talked about.

It brings all your knowledge together

An AI agent can instantly pull answers from Confluence, Google Docs, past support tickets, and your help center. This means it can give customers complete and accurate responses that native Salesforce automation just can’t build on its own.

It’s actually simple to set up

You can get started in minutes, not months. These platforms are genuinely self-serve, letting you connect your knowledge sources with a few clicks and build a powerful AI agent without writing a single line of code.

You can launch with confidence

With a simulation mode, you can test your AI on thousands of your past tickets. You get to see exactly how it would have performed, what percentage of tickets it could have resolved, and where your knowledge gaps are, all before a single customer interacts with it. No more crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Simulation mode allows you to test your AI agent on past tickets to ensure confident and effective Salesforce automation.

It can do more than just talk

The AI doesn’t just answer questions; it can take action. It can do things in other systems, like updating a ticket field, looking up an order status from Shopify, or escalating a tricky issue to the right team in Slack, all based on the conversation.

This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide on how to create automated tasks in Salesforce.

Comparing pricing for Salesforce automation: Salesforce vs. a dedicated AI platform

The difference in how these platforms are priced is pretty stark. One model is built around user seats and confusing tiers, while the other focuses on value and predictability.

Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing

Salesforce’s pricing is based on a per-user, per-month model, and the features you get really depend on the plan you choose. Getting your hands on their more advanced automation and AI requires moving up to the more expensive plans.

Plan	Price (Billed Annually)	Key Automation/AI Features
Starter Suite	$25/user/month	Basic lead/account management, email integration.
Pro Suite	$100/user/month	Forecasting, customizable reports, quoting.
Enterprise	$175/user/month	Advanced pipeline management, Conversation Intelligence.
Unlimited	$350/user/month	Predictive AI, Sales Engagement, Premier Success Plan.
Agentforce 1 Sales	$550/user/month	Full suite of AI, unmetered Agentforce usage.

Source: Salesforce Sales Cloud Pricing

These fees can add up fast as your team grows, and that’s often before you even factor in the cost of add-ons for specific AI features.

eesel AI pricing

A dedicated AI platform takes a completely different route. eesel AI offers straightforward plans based on the number of AI interactions, not how many seats you have. This means you don’t get punished for growing your team. All the core products, AI Agent, Copilot, Triage, and Chatbot, are included in every plan right from the start.

The biggest benefit here is having predictable costs. Many AI providers charge per resolution, which can lead to a surprisingly high bill after a busy month. With a model based on interactions, you always know what you’re paying for, which gives you a clear and predictable return on your investment.

The future of Salesforce automation is connected

Look, the built-in Salesforce automation is a fantastic tool for managing processes inside your CRM. But for modern customer support, it has its limits because your team’s knowledge is scattered everywhere and the setup can be so rigid.

The answer isn’t to get rid of Salesforce. It’s about adding a smart automation layer that can connect all the dots. By plugging in a tool like eesel AI, you can finally bring all your company knowledge together, automate support with confidence, and make your existing Salesforce workflows that much smarter.

Ready to make your Salesforce automation smarter?

See how eesel AI can plug into your existing tools and start resolving support tickets in minutes. Try it for free today.