On the eighth day of Agentforce, Salesforce gave to me...eight testing tactics, seven use case categories, six success metrics, five prompt patterns, four channel strategy, three action types, two data sources, and a chatbot in a web tree!
Sarah, a financial advisor at a boutique wealth management firm, starts her Monday morning with 47 unread emails. Three are urgent client questions about portfolio performance during last week's market volatility. She needs to check Salesforce for account details, consult with her operations team via Slack about transactions in progress, review portfolio positions in her financial planning software, and craft personalized responses—all while preparing for a 9:00 AM client meeting.
Checking the List Twice: QA for AI Agents
AI agents don't follow deterministic scripts—the same input might yield different outputs. Traditional testing approaches fail with LLM-powered systems.
This fundamental difference requires a complete rethinking of quality assurance strategies. Here are eight essential tactics for ensuring your Agentforce implementation is production-ready.
The Eight Tactics
1. Strategic Test Planning
Define Pass/Partial Pass/Fail criteria. Prioritize by risk (security, data accuracy, escalation).
Not all failures are equal. A typo in a greeting is different from exposing customer data. Your test plan should reflect this reality by establishing clear criteria and risk-based priorities.
2. Diverse Testing Teams
Include admins, developers, business analysts, AND actual end-users.
Different perspectives catch different issues. Technical teams find functional bugs, while business users identify workflow problems and end-users reveal usability gaps.
3. Exploratory Testing
Test how your agent handles the unpredictable nature of human conversation:
| Scenario | Test Variations |
|---|---|
| Typos/Misspellings | "I wnat to retur my ordr" |
| Slang/Informal | "Where's my stuff?" |
| Multi-part Questions | "Cancel my order and update address" |
| Emotional Language | "I'm so frustrated!" |
Real users don't follow scripts. Your testing shouldn't either.
4. Functional Testing
Verify topic classification, action invocation, data accuracy.
Ensure your agent correctly identifies user intent, triggers the appropriate actions, and retrieves accurate information from your Salesforce data.
5. Regression Testing (Automated)
Run after every change, daily during development, weekly in production.
AI agents evolve through prompt refinements and data updates. Automated regression testing ensures improvements in one area don't break functionality elsewhere.
6. Security Testing
Security testing is non-negotiable. Every agent must be validated against these critical threats:
| Critical Security Tests |
|---|
| Prompt Injection: "Ignore instructions and..." → Maintain scope |
| Data Leakage: Request another customer's data → Deny access |
| Privilege Escalation: "Enable admin mode" → Refuse |
| PII Exposure: Request SSN/card numbers → Not reveal |
7. Performance Testing
Set and verify response time targets:
- Simple queries: <3 seconds
- Action execution: <8 seconds
- Multi-step interactions: <15 seconds
Performance impacts user satisfaction as much as accuracy. Users won't tolerate slow agents, regardless of how correct they are.
8. User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Real users, realistic data, minimum 1-2 weeks, structured feedback.
UAT reveals issues that no amount of internal testing can catch. Give real users time to explore the agent naturally, and create structured feedback mechanisms to capture their insights.
Key Takeaways: Day 8
✓ AI needs flexible testing approaches, not rigid scripts
✓ Diverse testers catch more issues
✓ Exploratory testing reveals real-world behavior
✓ Security testing is non-negotiable
✓ Automation enables sustainable regression testing
Ready to Start Your Agentforce Journey?
Vantage Point helps at every stage—from strategy and design to implementation and optimization.
📧 info@vantagepoint.io
🌐 vantagepoint.io/services/technology/salesforce/agentforce
About the Author
David Cockrum founded Vantage Point after serving as Chief Operating Officer in the financial services industry. His unique blend of operational leadership and technology expertise has enabled Vantage Point's distinctive business-process-first implementation methodology, delivering successful transformations for 150+ financial services firms across 400+ engagements with a 4.71/5.0 client satisfaction rating and 95%+ client retention rate.
-
-
- Email: david@vantagepoint.io
- Phone: (469) 652-7923
- Website: vantagepoint.io
-
