""I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads," he told The Logan Bartlett Show podcast on Friday, as if to underscore the need to humanize the tech workforce. Benioff explained that he needed to "rebalance" the number of people employed in support with those in sales. He said using AI agents had caused the rethink of the CRM SaaS company's organizational shape and employment numbers."
"Now half of all conversations with customers are conducted by AI systems, Benioff claimed, with humans handling the rest. But LLMs could not do everything, he admitted. He said that the new AI agents could call back all customer leads, whereas its human workforce had previously failed to return about 100 million calls due to staffing limits. Benioff's confidence in AI agents, which entirely coincidentally Salesforce is banking on selling to its customers, belies concerns about the technology's effectiveness in the real world."
Marc Benioff said Salesforce cut 4,000 customer support roles by applying AI agents, reducing support headcount from 9,000 to about 5,000 to rebalance support with sales. AI agents now handle half of all customer conversations while humans handle the rest. Benioff claimed the agents can call back all customer leads, addressing about 100 million previously unreturned calls. Independent analysis raises concerns: Gartner forecasts over 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by 2027 due to cost, unclear value, or insufficient risk controls. Salesforce research found LLM agents achieved 58% success on single-step CRM tasks and struggled with customer confidentiality.
Read at www.theregister.com
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