Use Case: AI-Powered Patient Appointment Scheduling with Salesforce Agentforce

Current Challenge

Healthcare contact centers handle a high volume of inbound calls from patients requesting appointments. Support representatives must:

• Determine the appropriate appointment type.
• Search for provider availability.
• Manually match the patient's location and preferences.
• Perform checks like insurance verification or document dispatch.
  This process is time-consuming, inconsistent, and costly in terms of both agent and patient time.

Proposed Solution: Salesforce Agentforce Powered Intelligent Appointment Scheduling

1. Patient Self-Service via Portal (External AI Agent)

• Use Case: A patient visits the Experience Cloud portal.
• Solution: An external Agentforce agent guides the patient via a chat interface to:
  • Identify appointment type (based on patient input and history).
  • Check provider availability at their preferred or previously visited location.
  • Schedule the appointment.
  • Send confirmation and pre-appointment instructions or required documentation.
  • Ask for missing information like insurance if applicable.

2. Call-In Support (Internal AI Agent)

• Use Case: Patient calls into the support line.
• Solution: The internal Agentforce agent assists the support rep by:
  • Identifying the caller via phone number (via CTI integration).
  • Suggesting appointment slots based on previous visits and availability.
  • Automatically scheduling the appointment with minimal agent input.
  • Presenting post-visit summaries or relevant history.
  • Prompting the agent for any missing information required for scheduling.

Value Delivered

• Reduced Handling Time: Significant drop in time spent per appointment scheduling interaction.
• Increased Accuracy: Agentforce checks for prior visits, patient preferences, and required documents.
• Consistency & Compliance: Ensures every appointment meets business rules (e.g., documentation, insurance).
• Omnichannel Experience: Available on both portal (Experience Cloud) and phone (Omnichannel + CTI).
• Improved Patient Satisfaction: Faster response, timely reminders, and fewer follow-ups.

Technical Implementation Highlights

Agentforce Configuration

• Custom Topics & Actions:
  • Created using Flows for appointment lookups and scheduling.
  • Prompt templates to guide AI conversations and gather missing inputs.
  • Apex custom actions for integrating with external provider scheduling APIs.
  • Actions are tested and optimized in Copilot Builder with multiple example utterances.

Omnichannel Setup:

• Enabled Omnichannel routing to assign internal agents or fallback queues.
• Omnichannel Flows manage agent workload and fallback scenarios.

Experience Cloud Deployment:

• Agent is deployed on the patient portal using Embedded Service Deployment.
• Messaging channels integrated for real-time chat support.
• CORS and domain configurations enabled for external access.

Einstein Data Library Integration:

• Uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to surface past appointment summaries and related documents.
• Pulls content from Knowledge Articles and uploaded documents for contextual recommendations.

Summary

By deploying Salesforce Agentforce with internal and external agents, the healthcare provider modernizes and automates patient appointment scheduling, offering a seamless, intelligent experience across channels while reducing operational burden.

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