From TechRadar, September 2:
Salesforce has cut 45% of its customer support workers
- Salesforce has replaced thousands of workers with agentic AI
- CEO Marc Benioff said he “need[s] less heads” to clear a backlog
- Humans still bring valuable creativity, but AI adds efficiency
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has revealed the company has nearly halved its customer support workforce, replacing thousands of jobs with AI agents.
In a podcast interview with Logan Bartlett on YouTube, Benioff brutally stated: “I need less heads,” noting how instead of using human power, Salesforce is now using AI to process around 10,000 leads weekly.
Yet in the same interview, Benioff noted a lack of human resources had caused the company to accrue a backlog of 100 million uncalled leads over 26 years.
Salesforce slashes customer service headcount
The 45% drop from 9,000 to 5,000 comes as the company’s own AI platform, Agentforce, now handles around half of all customer conversations (around 1.5 million interactions) – some human workers remain to handle the rest.The remaining workers aren’t free of AI, either – they’ll be working under what Benioff calls an “omni channel supervisor who is kind of helping those agents and those humans work together.”....
....MUCH MORE
Also at TechRadar, September 2: Workers don't mind AI tools - they just wish they'd shut up once in a while
As they used to say on the old-timey British nature shows, as the lions approached the wildebeests:
"Sadly now, there can be but one outcome."
