Pega Just Cracked Self-Service With Bots That Actually Work

This week on Funnel Frontier: Pega just exposed every vendor’s bluff with self-service bots that do what everyone else just promised.

This week:

• Pega just cracked self-service with bots that actually work
• Salesforce keeps buying brains to make Agentforce smarter
•  

Stat of the Week

68% of consumers are more trusting of AI agents that exhibit human-like traits. (Zendesk)

Pega just cracked self-service with bots that actually work

Pega’s had enough of your chatbot pretending to be helpful.

The new Pega Self-Service Agent doesn’t guess, stall, or transfer you five times. It pulls from the same rules, data, and logic your human agents use—directly from the core workflows running inside your enterprise stack.

So instead of bolting AI on top of your contact channels, Pega wires it into the business layer, where the actual decisions live.

That means instead of handing off to a chatbot that gets confused halfway through a return request, customers talk to an agent that actually knows how your business runs.

Pega’s not selling a new channel. They’re selling a smarter way to scale what already works.

What’s actually under the hood?

Pega’s rolling this out as part of a three-pronged system:

• Pega Blueprint: lets teams design and deploy service flows with no code. No dev bottlenecks. No training modules. Build once, use across channels.
• Predictable AI: automation that follows enterprise rules and decisions, not some mystery box transformer. You get consistent outcomes, not surprises.
• Center-Out Architecture: the real flex. Instead of running logic at the edge (chatbot layer), Pega orchestrates every action from the enterprise core. Same workflows, whether the request comes from IVR, a support agent, a chatbot, or even email.

So when a customer hits the self-service bot, they’re not entering some parallel support universe. They’re plugging into the same decision tree a live agent would follow, just faster.

No, this isn’t just another chatbot (we promise!)

Let’s be honest: most self-service still sucks.

It’s fragmented, rigid, and forgetful. Bots get confused. Handoffs drop context. And companies end up maintaining duplicate logic—one set for humans, another for AI.

Pega’s trying to kill all of that.

With this new agent, companies can:

• Use their existing service processes across all channels
• Log and audit every interaction (good luck doing that with GenAI-only flows)
• Shift requests between bots and humans without losing state or flow
• Actually scale support automation without rebuilding the wheel each time

So while other vendors are still wrapping chat interfaces around brittle workflows, Pega’s giving the bot a direct line to the actual service engine.

Why Pega’s taking shots at the whole self-service market

Because most of it’s still a mess.

Vendors keep slapping GPT wrappers on basic bots and calling it innovation. But customers still hit dead ends, agents still redo the work, and execs still wonder why support costs haven’t gone down.

Pega’s betting the future of self-service is unified, auditable, and built on the same foundation as everything else in your CX stack.

It’s not about giving bots more flair. It’s about giving them access to the good stuff.

The Week @ CRM.org

Free CRM. Yes, it exists, with caveats. Like free samples at Costco, these apps are no-commitment, but may just ignite those taste buds. 

Collaborative CRM. Because “Better Off Alone” is a great 90s Eurodance song, but not a credible business ethos. We will go over the full explainer on this software style with examples.

Weekly Bloom 

6 Ways to Remain Productive Without Productivity Guilt. We're all aiming for that perfect work-life balance, but apparently, my brain missed the memo.

Salesforce keeps buying brains to make Agentforce smarter

Seems like Agentforce is getting a personality transplant, since Salesforce keeps shopping for the brains.

First, Salesforce grabbed Bluebirds, a prospecting agent that can sniff out warm leads and practically write your outbound emails for you.

Then it snapped up Waii, a baby-faced startup that turns plain English into SQL sorcery.

The message? Clearer than a chatbot hallucination: Salesforce is stocking Agentforce with agents that actually do something.

Bluebirds: Prospecting while you sleep

Salesforce grabbed Bluebirds, an agentic prospecting startup that’s been quietly eating BDR jobs for breakfast.

The product? A presales engine that:

• Targets buyers using CRM, LinkedIn, and web intent data
• Enriches leads using its own data network
• Scores them, prioritizes them, and…
• Auto-writes outbound sequences for your reps (who can edit, send, or scale them across the team)

It’s not just “Hey AI, write a follow-up.” It’s full-cycle, feedback-looped, agentic outreach.

Think: Monday morning hits, and reps already have a curated hit list + emails prepped. All that’s left is to close.

Waii: No more “ask your data team”

Let’s be honest, asking a non-technical teammate to “run a query” is like handing your dog a calculator.

Waii fixes that.

Salesforce will plug Waii’s natural language-to-SQL engine into Data Cloud and Tableau Next, so anyone can type something like:

“Show me customers in EMEA likely to churn this quarter,”

…and get a real answer. Instantly. No analyst bottleneck. No begging for access.

Waii’s secret weapon? A self-learning metadata knowledge graph that maps your messy data into something both humans and AI agents can navigate.

That’s big, because it means Agentforce bots can stop pretending they understand your data and actually start pulling real insights into live workflows.

The Salesforce playbook: Agentify everything

With Waii powering smarter data access and Bluebirds prospecting on autopilot, Salesforce is stitching together its vision for a fully agentified enterprise.

Let’s count the buzzwords:

• Agentic analytics = Tableau Next
• Agentic self-service = Service Cloud bots that actually resolve things
• Agentic prospecting = Bluebirds
• Agentic… HR? IT? Ops? Stay tuned.

Seems like Salesforce is betting the future is AI on the front lines, doing the actual work.

And with Informatica, Own Company, Moonhub, and Convergence.ai already in the cart, this year’s M&A spree looks less like impulse shopping and more like assembling the Avengers.

Galactic Gourmet

CRM blips from around the web

Apple Quietly Launches AI Support Agent. Apple rolled out an AI-powered Support Assistant in early preview. But with no Siri integration and limited functionality, critics say it’s a small move when Apple could be playing a much bigger game.

Clari and Salesloft Merge to Build AI-powered Revenue Engine. Clari and Salesloft are merging to create an “autonomous revenue system” that blends AI agents with human reps. The goal? Ingest 1T+ data signals to guide sales with context. Clari’s CEO will lead the new company.

RingCentral Expands AI Receptionist to All Phone Systems. RingCentral AIR Everywhere now brings 24/7 AI call handling—plus scheduling and multilingual support—to any phone system, no license required. Solopreneurs to enterprise teams can now add an AI front desk without switching providers.

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