Cyber Week Broke Records - And AI Agents Helped Close $67B
Buyers didn't wait for a rep. They asked an agent, got a recommendation, and checked out. That's the headline from Salesforce's 2025 Cyber Week analysis.
Global online sales from November 25-December 1 hit $336.6B, up 7% year over year. AI agents influenced $67B of that spend, with 1 in 5 orders involving agent-led recommendations or service.
Key numbers sales leaders should know
- $336.6B global online sales (+7% YoY); $67B directly influenced by AI agents
- Retailers using Agentforce 360 grew 32% faster than peers without dedicated agents
- AI-guided service conversations: +55% week over week
- Agent-driven tasks (address updates, return initiations): +70%
- Salesforce supported 61M online orders
- Agentforce Service resolved 4.2B case interactions
- Data 360 processed 1.26T records (+44% YoY)
- Black Friday accounted for 31% of Cyber Week sales; retail POS volumes up 96% YoY
- Black Friday: $79B global (+6%), $18B U.S. (+3%)
- Cyber Monday: $53B global (+7%), $13.6B U.S. (+6%)
Why this matters for your quota
AI isn't just answering FAQs. It's recommending products, guiding checkout, and completing service tasks that remove friction from buying. That translates into higher conversion rates and less manual load on your team.
If your funnel depends on speed, personalization, and mobile, agentic experiences are now a core sales lever - not a side project.
What high-growth teams did differently
- Embedded a shopper agent to handle discovery, comparisons, and cart builds in real time
- Linked sales and service so returns, address fixes, and WISMO didn't stall purchases
- Made mobile the default: social discovery, agent search (e.g., ChatGPT), and wallet checkout
- Synced online-to-store offers; Black Friday POS growth shows the online journey drives in-store spend
- Trained reps to partner with agents (prompting, next-best-action, offer testing) instead of working around them
- Measured agent impact with clear KPIs: conversion lift, AOV, time-to-resolution, and cost-to-serve
Voices from the field
Josh Smiley, SVP and Global Head of Technology at Funko: "The holiday season represents our biggest opportunity to scale direct-to-consumer revenue, and agentic experiences are paramount to that success." He added that going live with a shopper agent, powered by Agentforce Commerce and conversational AI, brought a seamless, personalized buying experience.
Caila Schwartz, Director, Consumer Insights at Salesforce: "We are seeing a consumer who is committed to spending, and the intent is expressed almost entirely through a mobile device - from browsing on social platforms and AI agent search to paying via mobile wallet."
Chris Jones, Managing Director at PSE Consulting: "AI is now becoming an active participant in the payment process... Systems designed for human-paced transactions are under pressure to support high-frequency, agent-initiated flows."
Consumer readiness is here
- 49% of UK adults use AI tools regularly; 22% plan to use AI for holiday shopping
- Among 18-34-year-olds, intent hits 42%
- 85% of those planning to use AI would trust it to place orders and process payments on their behalf
Industry outlooks echo this shift. McKinsey projects automated agents could influence up to $1T in U.S. online spending by 2030. See related McKinsey research.
Operational checklist for sales and RevOps
- Data quality: unify catalog, inventory, pricing, and customer profiles; stale data kills recommendations
- Decisioning: deploy guardrails for discounts, returns, and credits that agents can follow
- Mobile-first flows: social-to-cart handoff, wallet payments, and low-friction authentication
- Fraud and liability: update policies for agent-initiated orders, real-time authorization, and chargebacks
- Service automations: let agents close tasks (exchanges, address updates) without human handoffs
- Attribution: tag agent touchpoints so you can forecast agent-driven revenue with confidence
- Training: teach reps prompt patterns, fair-use of agent suggestions, and escalation rules
30-day plan to capture the lift
- Week 1: Map the top 10 friction points from browse to buy to post-purchase; pick 3 to automate with an agent
- Week 2: Launch an agent-led product finder on high-intent pages; A/B test offer logic
- Week 3: Turn on agent-driven service tasks (returns, address fixes) and measure time-to-resolution
- Week 4: Instrument analytics for agent attribution; update comp plans to credit agent-assisted conversions
In-store still matters - and it's connected
Black Friday remains the biggest in-store day, driving 31% of Cyber Week sales and a 96% YoY jump in retail POS volumes on Salesforce systems. The takeaway: your online journey now sets up the store close. Align promos, inventory holds, and pickup options so agents can route demand to the channel most likely to convert.
Bottom line
AI agents are now part of how buyers discover, decide, and transact. Sales teams that embrace agent-led flows will see faster cycles, higher conversion, and lower service costs. Those that don't will feel it in pipeline velocity and CAC.
If your team wants practical training to implement agent-led sales and service workflows, explore role-based programs here: Complete AI Training - Courses by Job.
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