Salesforce Cuts 4,000 Customer Support Jobs as AI Takes Over Half of Customer Interactions

Salesforce sacrifices 4,000 support jobs on the altar of AI

Benioff boasts bots now handle half of customer chats as doubts over reliability linger Speaking ahead of Labor Day - celebrated in the US to recognize the nation's labor movement - Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff said the company had slashed 4,000 customer support roles through the application of AI agents. "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. In June, IT consultancy Gartner said that more than 40 percent of agentic AI projects would be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, unclear business value, or insufficient risk controls. In fact, Salesforce's own study provided a benchmark that showed LLM-based AI agents perform below par on standard CRM tests and fail to understand the importance of customer confidentiality. In June, a team led by Kung-Hsiang Huang, a Salesforce AI researcher, published results showing that GenAI agents achieved only a 58 percent success rate on tasks that can be completed in a single step without needing follow-up actions or more information. Separate research from Forrester suggests that enterprise application vendors are using their entrenched positions among customers to end discounting and push high-margin AI products. "The era of monetization has begun," the report states. Vendors under the microscope in the study included Oracle, SAP, Workday, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and Salesforce. Benioff has been keen to show how AI will reap returns for investors. Last year, he said investors were worried that the pool of billable "seats" would shrink as AI agents took over human roles. But he said consumption-based pricing for AI agents would ensure it was a "very high margin opportunity" for Salesforce. Salesforce follows buy-now-pay-later outfit Klarna in wanting to reduce headcount with AI agents. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski predicted he could cut 1,800 from the 3,800 people the company employs through AI investment. However, this spring, the company reportedly put more people back into customer service. Duolingo, meanwhile, said it would gradually phase out contractors for work that LLMs could do. ®

Salesforce CEO confirms 4,000 layoffs 'because I need less heads' with AI

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025. Salesforce has cut 4,000 of its customer support roles, CEO Marc Benioff recently said while discussing how artificial intelligence has helped reduce the company headcount. Benioff revealed the layoffs during an interview published Friday on The Logan Bartlett Show podcast. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads," Benioff said while discussing the impact of AI on Salesforce operations. Salesforce has been on the front lines of the AI revolution and has built what it calls an "Agentforce" of customer service bots. "Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we've seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles," Salesforce said in a statement Tuesday to NBC Bay Area. The layoffs come after Benioff over the summer announced AI is doing up to 50% of the work at Salesforce, which is based in San Francisco. Laurie Ruettimann, a human resources consultant, said AI is affecting jobs in several industries. "There have been layoffs all over America directly attributed to AI," Ruettimann said, adding anyone who wants to stay employed or looking for work needs to learn new skills. "If your network could get you a job, it would have done it already. It would have done it yesterday," Ruettimann said. "It's on you to expand your vision, to expand your horizons and to meet new people." Analyst Ed Zitron said AI is being blamed by tech companies that over hired during the pandemic. The companies are now looking to lure investors by claiming to be more efficient, Zitron said. "It's just a growth at all costs mindset," Zitron said. "The only thing that's important is growth, even if it ruins people's lives. Even if it makes the company worse and provides an inferior product."

Salesforce CEO says it cut 4,000 support jobs - and replaced them with AI

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. 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." It seems that customer satisfaction scores from AI and human interactions have remained about the same, which could spell out a troubling future for human customer service workers. Benioff framed AI tools as a way to address labor shortages as well as its cost-cutting benefits - it now handles around 30-50% of work in some areas, like support. Looking ahead, the CEO (who previously stated that today's generation of CEOs is the last to only manage human workers) believes that every company is now on a path to become an agentic enterprise. Despite his preference for replacing human workers with AI, Benioff still criticized companies for not hiring fresh grads, slating them for missing an opportunity. Young talent who embrace agentic AI are among the most likely to succeed. Clearly, then, it's about striking the right balance of productivity, with Benioff himself acknowledging both the uniqueness and creativity of humans, and the need for AI guardrails.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says his company has cut 4,000 customer service jobs as AI steps in: 'I need less heads'

ChatGPT only launched three years ago. Since then, leaders including Marc Benioff and Jensen Huang have been adamant that cheaper alternatives to labor won't cause mass unemployment. But in reality, the technology is slashing human headcounts at major companies -- including Salesforce, which has cut 4,000 of its customer support roles for AI agents to pick up the work. "I was able to rebalance my headcount on my support," Marc Benioff, CEO of the $248 billion computer software company, recently revealed on the podcast The Logan Bartlett Show. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads." "If we were having this conversation a year ago and you were calling Salesforce, there would be 9,000 people that you would be interacting with globally on our service cloud and they would be managing, creating, reading, updating, deleting data," he added. Today, those same interactions are happening, but "50% are with agents, 50% are with humans." And he doesn't see his hybrid AI-human workforce as an other-worldly future. "I don't think it's dystopian at all," he added. "This is reality, at least for me." The tech titan has shown an interest in automating customer support jobs for some months now, previously telling Fortune that AI agents have completed over a million conversations with customers over the past six to nine months. But at the time, he said that mass layoffs weren't on the cards. "I keep looking around, talking to CEOs, asking: what AI are they using for these big layoffs? I think AI augments people, but I don't know if it necessarily replaces them," Benioff revealed. "The reason is because a lot of this is still built on word models. Maybe there's a future AI model that will be more accurate, but that's not where we are right now. This is about humans and AI working together." And while the customer service department gets heavily slashed, he's still adamant that it's an "exciting" time for the wider company -- and that humans will remain at the core of the function. "There's also an omni-channel supervisor now that's helping those agents and those humans work together," Benioff said on the podcast. "And this is the most exciting thing that's happened in the last nine months for Salesforce." Plus, Salesforce's elimination of support roles in particular should come as no surprise. The tech CEO has said that agents are already doing 30% to 50% of work within the company and that two roles in particular had the potential to be automated by AI agents: support and sales. By pushing humans out in favor of the advanced technology, Benioff said Salesforce has reduced its support cost by 17% so far. But further automation beyond sales and support could be on the cards as the Salesforce boss revealed he's looking at "every single function" to see how it can become an agentic business. CEOs once denied the fact that rapid AI adoption will slash staffers across organizations -- but now leaders are openly sharing their plans to replace humans with bots. More than 64,000 have been laid off across the tech sector this year as industry heavyweights lead the charge in job automation. In early July, Microsoft announced that it will cut about 9,000 roles -- its largest round of layoffs since 2023. That plan brings the $3.74 trillion company's total layoffs this year to a whopping 15,000 jobs, despite the company doing well financially; Microsoft posted a 18% year-to-year increase in net income last quarter. However, not all workers get to stick around after bringing home the bacon -- the latest round of cuts is expected to hit sales and customer-facing roles, alongside the Xbox gaming division. Meta joined in on the automation push, laying off 3,600 employees in Feburary -- and CEO Mark Zuckerberg even said that AI could be "effectively be a sort of mid-level engineer" sometime this year, with the ability to code. Google also wasn't shy about reducing hundreds of roles across its Android, Pixel, and Chrome sectors. In reasoning about the mass firings, both Silicon Valley giants claimed the need to streamline human operations and invest more in AI. And Benioff's far from being the first leader to cut down specifically customer service jobs -- fintech company Klarna's AI agents are doing the work of 700 customer service employees. And among the professions most impacted by generative AI, sales representatives rank fourth and customer service agents rank sixth. "We have so many leads that we can't follow up on them all. Sales people basically cherry pick what leads they want to call back. Thousands of leads, tens of thousands of leads, hundreds of thousands of leads have never been called back," Benioff told Fortune earlier this year. "But in the agentic world, there's no excuse for that. Every lead can be followed up on."

Salesforce CEO confirms 4,000 layoffs 'because I need less heads' with AI

Salesforce has cut 4,000 of its customer support roles, CEO Marc Benioff recently said while discussing how artificial intelligence has helped reduce the company headcount. Benioff revealed the layoffs during an interview published Friday on The Logan Bartlett Show podcast. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads," Benioff said while discussing the impact of AI on Salesforce operations. Salesforce has been on the front lines of the AI revolution and has built what it calls an "Agentforce" of customer service bots. "Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we've seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles," Salesforce said in a statement Tuesday to NBC Bay Area. The layoffs come after Benioff over the summer announced AI is doing up to 50% of the work at Salesforce, which is based in San Francisco. Laurie Ruettimann, a human resources consultant, said AI is affecting jobs in several industries. "There have been layoffs all over America directly attributed to AI," Ruettimann said, adding anyone who wants to stay employed or looking for work needs to learn new skills. "If your network could get you a job, it would have done it already. It would have done it yesterday," Ruettimann said. "It's on you to expand your vision, to expand your horizons and to meet new people." Analyst Ed Zitron said AI is being blamed by tech companies that over hired during the pandemic. The companies are now looking to lure investors by claiming to be more efficient, Zitron said. "It's just a growth at all costs mindset," Zitron said. "The only thing that's important is growth, even if it ruins people's lives. Even if it makes the company worse and provides an inferior product."

Salesforce Uses AI Agents to Cut 4,000 Support Jobs and Drive Leads

On a mission to make Salesforce an agentic enterprise, says CEO Marc Benioff. Salesforce, the American CRM platform, has reduced its support staff from 9,000 to about 5,000 after deploying its new agentic service and support product, according to CEO Marc Benioff. Speaking on a recent podcast, Benioff said Salesforce acted as "customer zero" for the tool, which has already handled about 1.5 million customer conversations. Human support agents conducted roughly the same number of interactions over the same period. Benioff emphasised that AI is not just reducing costs but also boosting revenue. Salesforce had more than 100 million unaddressed leads built up over the last 26 years due to limited staffing, he revealed, adding that with its new agentic sales system, Salesforce is now contacting every lead, conducting more than 10,000 conversations per week.

Salesforce cut 4,000 roles because of AI, CEO says

Artificial intelligence is already replacing certain jobs at technology companies. Last week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the San Francisco software giant was able to shrink the number of people in support roles from 9,000 to 5,000 because "AI agents" are helping to automate certain tasks. Appearing on "The Logan Bartlett Show," a podcast that focuses on entrepreneurship, Benioff promoted a platform Salesforce developed that enables businesses to deploy AI agents to provide customer service, support employees and improve productivity. Salesforce's AI agents, which are capable of proactively doing work without constant input from a human, can respond to questions from customers about pricing, generate marketing materials and manage websites, according to the company's website. Salesforce, which is among the tech companies that have slashed their workforces this year while doubling down on AI investments, said that the number of support cases the company handled declined and that it no longer needed to backfill support engineer roles because of efficiency gains from using its AI agent platform. "We've successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success," the company said in a statement. Benioff's latest remarks show how AI is prompting tech companies that are building more powerful AI tools to rethink what their workers do. As businesses look at ways to slash costs, tech companies have promoted AI as a way to do more with fewer people. In June, Benioff said that AI is doing 30% to 50% of the company's work. Some tech executives have said that AI will replace certain jobs, such as entry-level roles, and also create other work. Still, the rise of AI could shrink the workforce at certain companies, fueling anxiety among various professions such as screenwriting and coding. It is reshaping San Francisco, a city that has seen AI companies take over vacant office space and compete with one another for talent. This year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said he expects the e-commerce giant to shrink its workforce as employees "get efficiency gains from using AI extensively." Benioff stopped short of saying that AI will automate all jobs. "Humans are not going away," Benioff said on the podcast. "We are working in partnership with these agents, and that's how I look at it." Although AI has been around a long time, it is generative AI that can quickly generate images, text, code and other information that is disrupting work. As more businesses leverage AI, questions remain about whether it will help companies rake in more profits. OpenAI, Google and other tech companies are trying to expand the use of AI tools in government, education and various industries. Research from McKinsey & Co., a management consulting firm, found that nearly 8 in 10 companies have deployed generative AI, but that same number is also reporting "no material impact on earnings." That's because the use of some of these chatbots "tend to be spread thinly across employees" and the deployment of AI to assist sales, support and other business tasks is limited or has narrow use restrictions. Salesforce has seen benefits from using its AI tools, Benioff said on the podcast. In the last 26 years, he said, the company had more than 100 million leads that Salesforce couldn't respond to because it didn't have enough workers. But now the company's salespeople can respond to more customers with the help of AI. The company also has a supervisor who helps AI agents and humans work together, he said. Salesforce has more than 76,000 employees worldwide.

AI has enabled Salesforce to slash 4K support roles: CEO

Investments in AI have prompted job cuts at other tech giants Artificial intelligence (AI) has enabled Salesforce to cut 4,000 customer support roles this year, CEO Marc Benioff said on a recent podcast. With AI agents taking on more tasks, the San Francisco tech giant's support headcount has been reduced by nearly half. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads," Benioff said on "The Logan Bartlett Show." He laid out the change like this: "If we were having this conversation a year ago, and you were calling Salesforce, there would be 9,000 people that you would be interacting with globally on our service cloud and they would be managing, creating, reading, updating and deleting data." Now, half of those conversations are conducted by AI agents, with humans handling the rest, Benioff said. The rise of AI agents, and rebalancing that followed, has also allowed Salesforce to "put those heads into sales," where the company hasn't had enough staff to keep up with demand, the CEO noted. "There were more than 100 million leads that we have not called back at Salesforce in the last 26 years because we have not had enough people," Benioff said. He added: "We now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us." Eventually, Benioff sees the 50-50 split between AI agents and humans expanding to the company's other divisions, beyond support roles and into sales and marketing. "This is really the beginning of every part of the company having this kind of agentic augmentation," he said. In a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle, a Salesforce spokesperson said the company has not been actively backfilling support engineer roles because of the efficiency gains from its AI agent platform. "We've successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success," the spokesperson said. Benioff, who co-founded Salesforce in 1999, has been more outspoken about his AI ambitions than many in Silicon Valley. Back in June, he told Bloomberg that AI was already doing 30 to 50 percent of Salesforce's work -- a striking figure for a company with more than 75,000 employees. Investments in AI have also prompted job cuts at other major tech companies. In July, Microsoft announced it would be laying off nearly 4 percent of its workforce amid heavy AI spending. Meta slashed thousands of "low performers" earlier this year as the company pumps billions into AI. When asked whether mainstream enterprises are starting to absorb AI, Benioff thinks it's still early. "We're at the beginning of the beginning," he said.

Is AI killing jobs? Salesforce cuts 4,000 support roles as automation takes over

Salesforce job cuts 2025: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says artificial intelligence is transforming the way his company works and reshaping its workforce in the process. In a new episode of the podcast 'The Logan Bartlett Show' released ahead of Labor Day weekend, Benioff revealed that Salesforce has cut around 4,000 customer support roles this year, as per a report. The reason is AI, as it is now handling a significant portion of the company's customer interactions, according to the SF Chronicle. Benioff said, "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads," as quoted in the report. ALSO READ: Cardi B cleared in security guard assault lawsuit, says 'I did not touch that woman' after jury's verdict While that may sound harsh, Benioff framed the move as part of a broader and more exciting shift happening inside the San Francisco-based tech giant, according to the report. He called the last eight months "the most exciting" of his career, even though the firm cut thousands of jobs, as per the SF Chronicle. Salesforce, which remains San Francisco's largest private employer with about 76,000 employees globally, has been pushing aggressively into artificial intelligence, according to the report. Earlier this year, it launched 'Agentforce', an AI-powered support platform that automates a growing share of customer service tasks, as per the SF Chronicle report. A Salesforce spokesperson told the SF Chronicle, "At the start of this year we deployed help.agentforce.com," adding, "Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we've seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles," as quoted in the report. ALSO READ: US Open 2025: Tennis players' luxury watches, jewelry & crystal labubu dolls steal the show However, not all affected employees were let go. Benioff highlighted that Salesforce has been shifting some workers from support into other departments like sales, professional services, and customer success, areas the company sees as growth opportunities, according to the report. The firm's spokesperson said that, "We've successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success," as quoted by SF Chronicle. Even Benioff shared that, "I've rebalanced my support head count as I said, so I can now put those heads into sales," adding, "So I've increased my distribution capacity," as quoted in the report. ALSO READ: What's really going on with Trump's health - is he hiding a serious illness? According to the SF Chronicle report, about half of all customer service interactions at Salesforce are now being handled by AI systems, with human agents managing the rest. Benioff explained that AI agents, which break down complex tasks into smaller steps and can independently complete assignments, have reshaped the company's operations, as reported by the SF Chronicle. He said, "If we were having this conversation a year ago and you were calling Salesforce, there would be 9,000 people that you would be interacting with globally on our service cloud," as quoted in the report. However, the CEO pointed out that, "These large language models can do a lot of things, but they cannot do everything," as quoted by the SF Chronicle. ALSO READ: Is your state the hardest-working in America or the laziest? See where it ranks in work race! Meanwhile, the shift has also helped Salesforce to reconnect with customers long been overlooked, as for decades, the company failed to return more than 100 million leads due to staffing limits, according to the report. Benioff said that, "We now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us," as quoted by SF Chronicle. Why did Salesforce cut 4,000 jobs this year? The company automated a large portion of its customer support with AI, reducing the need for human agents. What is Agentforce? Agentforce is Salesforce's AI-powered customer support platform launched in early 2025.