Did Salesforce Just Launch Its ServiceNow Killer?!

This week on Funnel Frontier: Salesforce's Agentforce IT Service is here and it’s taking direct aim at ServiceNow’s turf.
 

This week:

• Did Salesforce just launch its ServiceNow killer?!
• Zendesk’s new AI wants to solve your tickets before you open them

Stat of the Week

Salesforce CRM commands a 22.99% market share, more than the combined total of its three closest competitors (HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and Odoo). 6sense

Did Salesforce just launch its ServiceNow killer?!

Let’s get one thing out of the way: this is not a side quest. Salesforce isn’t just dipping a toe into ITSM—it’s cannonballing in.

The CRM giant officially unveiled Agentforce IT Service last week, rolling it out as part of Service Cloud ahead of what’s expected to be a major focus at Dreamforce 2025.

If that sounds like déjà vu, it is. You might remember Salesforce’s Agentforce for HR Service rollout back in May. 

Now, IT gets the same treatment. And unlike many AI add-ons duct-taped onto legacy systems, this one was built AI-first.

What is Agentforce IT Service?

You can think of Agentforce IT Service as Salesforce’s answer to ServiceNow—just built on a single platform with AI agents baked in from the start. Here's what you get out of the box:

• An AI-native IT Service Desk with incident, problem, change, and request management
• AI agents for employees to resolve issues, automate workflows, and avoid ticket hell
• AI agents for IT teams to summarize, classify, predict incidents, and do root-cause analysis
• A CMDB + Service Graph to map every app, service, and system connection across the org

“Not a retrofitted legacy system”  

That’s Salesforce’s messaging, especially when asked how it plans to take on a crowded ITSM market led by ServiceNow.

“Everything we’ve created lives on one unified platform,” said Kishan Chetan, EVP & GM for Service Cloud. That includes your data, workflows, agents, and apps, whether you're in Slack, Teams, Google Workspace, or good ol’ Salesforce.

Meanwhile, the built-in AI agents do more than deflect tickets. They troubleshoot, route, predict, and escalate. The system also comes with pre-built modules for release/change management, a full-blown CMDB, and a Service Graph to tie it all together.

According to Salesforce’s announcement, it’s “agentic” from the ground up, meaning automation is the default.

One service stack to rule them all?

By bundling IT and HR service flows into Service Cloud, Salesforce now offers companies a way to unify customer, employee, and IT support inside one shared system.

And that’s smart. Because a ticket is a ticket, whether it’s from a frustrated customer or a panicked sales rep whose VPN just stopped working.

This unified model makes the data more actionable, the AI smarter, and the user experience less disjointed. Plus, with IT teams playing a bigger role in AI procurement, tying service delivery to Salesforce’s existing stack just makes sense.

Is this a ServiceNow slap?

Not officially. But the vibes are… pointed. ServiceNow has been gunning for CRM, and now Salesforce is punching back in ITSM.

Salesforce estimates it has 60,000 Service Cloud customers compared to ~9,000 for ServiceNow, and it’s hoping that base will flip the switch on Agentforce IT Service.

The competition is clearly heating up. Both companies are pushing AI-first agents, both are vying for end-to-end service automation, and both are angling to become the enterprise’s default operating layer for support.

Salesforce isn’t trying to play nice anymore. It’s saying: we’ve got the customers, the stack, and the AI—and now we’ve got ITSM, too.

And it’s doing it just in time for Dreamforce.

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Zendesk’s new AI wants to solve your tickets before you open them

Remember when bots couldn’t even handle “I forgot my password”? Zendesk’s trying to erase that memory.

Last week, it dropped a fresh batch of AI features under its Resolution Platform, and let’s just say, the bots leveled up. 

Talk to the bot, not the wall

Zendesk’s new voice agents aren’t here to read you the FAQ. They can actually handle things—pulling context, clicking the buttons, and escalating when stuff gets messy. All without sounding like a GPS from 2009.

And if voice alone won’t cut it? They’ve now got video calls and screen sharing baked in. Because sometimes your “printer not working” face says more than words ever could.

Zendesk’s brain just got a cortex upgrade

Behind the scenes, it’s not just LLMs doing the heavy lifting. Zendesk has layered in its own Model Context Protocol (MCP), basically a private API highway for AI agents to pull real-time context and stay grounded.

That means no hallucinations, no stale responses. Just agents that know what the hell’s going on.

Plus, thanks to its recent HyperArc acquisition, Zendesk’s AI can now spot trends, run analytics, and predict fires before they start.

Admins, this one’s for you

Zendesk didn’t stop with agents and interfaces—they gave admins a glow-up too.
The new toolbox is built for behind-the-scenes heroes:

• Knowledge Builder: turns docs into AI-ready intel
• Action Builder: lets you spin up workflows with clicks, not code
• Admin Copilot: suggests setup tweaks based on data, not gut feel

And if you’re in IT support? Zendesk just dropped built-in asset management. So the next time someone says, “my laptop’s on fire,” you won’t need to start a Slack scavenger hunt to ID the device.

Zendesk just gave its bots a brain transplant

Zendesk’s stacking AI that talks, thinks, builds, and learns, without making humans feel like second-class citizens in their own workflows.

Because in 2025, customer service should be all about clearing the runway before the chaos even takes off.

Zendesk’s betting big that smart, unified, context-rich automation is how you get there. And honestly? It’s starting to look like a good bet.

Galactic Gourmet

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