Salesforce has cut its customer support division by 4,000 employees, nearly halving the team, after deploying artificial intelligence to handle a growing share of the workload. In a recent podcast interview, CEO Marc Benioff revealed the company is using its own AI agents to manage half of all customer service interactions and is now working through a backlog of 100 million sales leads that had accumulated over 26 years due to insufficient human staffing.
Benioff said the company’s support headcount was reduced from 9,000 to 5,000 because “I need less heads,” during an appearance on The Logan Bartlett Show. The move allowed him to rebalance staff and increase the company’s sales capacity. A Salesforce spokesperson later clarified that rather than active layoffs, the company has stopped backfilling the support roles as they become vacant and has “redeployed hundreds of employees” to other departments. The remaining human agents now work alongside AI under what Benioff calls an “omnichannel supervisor” that helps them collaborate.
The shift is part of Salesforce’s broader strategy around its Agentforce AI platform, which provides digital agents for specific industries like manufacturing to automate operations, manage inventory, and predict maintenance needs. While Benioff is championing his own company’s products, he has expressed skepticism about the broader industry’s race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), a concept he recently dismissed as “hypnosis.”
Salesforce’s move reflects a tectonic shift in the enterprise, with the AI agent market projected to grow from $7.8 billion in 2024 to $27.3 billion by 2030, according to one report. The growing ecosystem around Salesforce’s AI tools is also gaining traction, underscored by Accenture’s recent acquisition of NeuraFlash, a consulting firm specializing in Agentforce, signaling strong market confidence in the technology.
Sources
- TechRadar: Salesforce CEO says it cut 4,000 support jobs – and replaced them with AI
- San Francisco Chronicle: Salesforce cut 4,000 jobs after deploying AI. But it’s not what you think
- Manufacturing Digital: Salesforce deploys manufacturing AI to bridge skills gap
- Gizmodo: Marc Benioff Can’t Get Enough of the AI Hype, Unless You Say ‘AGI’
- Forbes: The AI Agent Economy: Five Strategies To Create Value And Transform Industries
- Washington Technology: Accenture acquiring AI consulting firm NeuraFlash
