These consumer-facing industries are the fastest adopters of AI agents (www.zdnet.com)

Salesforce’s Agentic Enterprise Index reports a rapid surge in enterprise AI agents in H1 2025: first-mover companies increased agent creation 119% (Jan–Jun), employee interactions grew at an average monthly rate of 65%, and agent actions tied to employee conversations rose ~76% month‑over‑month. Consumer-facing sectors are leading adoption—travel & hospitality saw agent actions grow 133% monthly, retail 128%, and financial services 105%. Customer service use exploded (six‑month CAGR ~2,199% for the average business), with retail and service organizations showing dramatic increases in agent-led conversations and actions. Worker adoption of AI climbed 233% since fall 2024; daily AI users report much higher productivity (+64%), focus (+58%) and job satisfaction (+81%). Consumers also opt in: 94% choose agent interaction when available, and interestingly escalations to humans rose from 22% to 32% between Q1 and Q2 2025—suggesting agents are improving triage. Technically, the index frames an “agentic enterprise” as one that deploys autonomous, goal‑oriented agents that plan, reason, learn continuously, and integrate with enterprise systems to execute multi‑step workflows and augment human work. Key implications: broad productivity gains, shifts in customer‑service routing (agents handle routine work while escalating complex cases), and a sizable economic opportunity (estimated $450B by 2028). For AI/ML teams this means prioritizing safe automation, robust system integration, continual learning pipelines, and human-in-the-loop escalation mechanisms.