Salesforce CEO Says AI Enabled Him To Cut 4,000 Jobs (kron4.com) 81
An anonymous reader shares a report: Speaking to The Logan Bartlett Show on Friday, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the use of AI agents had enabled him to "rebalance" his headcount in the customer support division by trimming 4,000 jobs. "I've reduced it from 9,000 head to about 5,000 because I need less heads," Benioff said. Benioff called the first eight months of 2025, during which an estimated 10,000 jobs have been lost to AI, "eight of the most exciting months of my career."
"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. "We just couldn't call them back. But we now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us."
"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. "We just couldn't call them back. But we now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us."
A robo call? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And that is what an AI agent is! And no one will answer non whitelisted call or texts.
More than that, companies that do this have a very real risk of being in violation of a number of federal laws. If the person they are calling didn't previously explicitly consent to be robocalled, then it is outright illegal to call a cell phone in this way. And if they're on the do-not-call registry, this is also likely illegal.
More to the point, the more companies do this, the more people will sign up for the do-not-call registry again to make them stop, and you'll end up ruining it for everybody.
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Soon we will have AI call screening that answers for us, interacts with the caller, and decides whether to handle it directly, disconnect, or forward it to the user. At what point do we just have AI talking to AI, peddling AI services to AI agents? Will we end up with both sides of the AI getting into a generation loop and find calls of them repeating a word or phrase at each other indefinitely? Or will the human suddenly have a 117 quadrillion dollar charge declined on their credit card because their AI ag
Replaced Support Jobs (Score:3)
Re: Replaced Support Jobs (Score:5, Informative)
I know that quality support is not something you want in your SaaS offering. If my company is paying for a SaaS product we want a dedicated human to contact.
Re: Replaced Support Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Replaced Support Jobs (Score:3)
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.toolify.ai%2Fai-news%2Fcustomer-experience-vs-service-vs-support-key-differences-3383886
Re: Replaced Support Jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
I dunno if their service is that great. Reminds me of a hilarious thread from a week ago:
https://f6ffb3fa-34ce-43c1-939d-77e64deb3c0c.atarimworker.io/comments.... [slashdot.org]
I suspect that this is either going to allow them to continue what they're already doing and not really increase their margins, or it's going to blow up in their face. I don't believe their financials will improve as a result of this. AI is neither free nor is it a 1:1 replacement for service or support.
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Instead of hundreds of poorly qualified people why canâ(TM)t we have someone who actually knows the products to smash through tickets
As someone who worked for years in support (a long time ago), it's a classic case of "intersection of sets".
On one hand, you have the set of people who actually know the products. On the other, you have the set of people willing to work in support, manning phones.
The first set is more or less inelastic. The second set can be increased somewhat by offering high salaries, but that's limited because if you increase them enough, you would reduce other sets (e.g. people who know the product but work in other are
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Apologies, I should have mentioned that the situation I mentioned was about in-house employees.
Re: Replaced Support Jobs (Score:2)
Welcome to the wonderful world (Score:2)
After a business has that happened to him a couple of times and they are forced to completely reconfigure their entire environment for the software owned by the company doing the buying they eventually just give up and go with the big kid on the block.
If we
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Most "support" units are so horrible that the company would be better off just staying flat out "we offer no support. If you have problems with our product/service, don't call us." At least that would be honest and set clear expectations.
I had to contact "support" for TCL (tv company) recently. My opening statement above is what I was thinking the whole time I was in contact with those worthless bastards.
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I don't know how good Salesforce's AI is. However, I spoke to two relatives a month ago, one is a BDR (business development representative i.e. cold call outreach sales rep) at a CRM company (and he totally hates the job but good pay), the other used to work there and now works for an AI based CRM venture. They say the writing is definitely on the wall, BDRs will lose their jobs and instead you will have a small number of managers who oversee the AI-driven robo-BDRs. You'd think people would just hang up on
Pressing "0" won't get you a real person anymore.. (Score:3)
Just another "agentic sales" agent with a different AI voice and accent.
It's all part of the plan, we'll all need AI agentic agents to avoid all the agentic agent generated spam emails, calls and advertising.
Welcome to the new world, same as the old one... just with completely closed AI that does not work well for customers, but works mostly as programmed for the providers who have the nuclear power plants to keep all running.
Near future employment interview:
Possible employer: "So why did you leave your last job?"
Possible employee: "I was replaced by an AI."
Possible employer: dead connection.
Screw CEOs (Score:3)
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They've been laying people off for the past three years or so. When they started doing so, they stated they had over-hired during the pandemic. I suspect this latest statement is attempt at a more positive spin. Not to mention that a company selling AI products, like Salesforce, probably feels they need to (at least pretend to) show that they are saving money by using AI - "Hey it's saving us money and it can save YOU money!"
Re: Screw CEOs (Score:3)
To me it seems like Salesforce is one of the companies just above telemarketer tier that is just a waste of money.
DISEASE in a dot com name - done. (Score:5, Insightful)
I get calls and emails from salesforce. They all fail the Turing test and get terminated.
Their CEO can fire the remaining 5,000 people and declare bankruptcy. It's no longer 2001 and people don't want to talk to "an agent" or get spam from a supposed list they never signed up for.
Salesforce.com is a disease.
Re:DISEASE in a dot com name - done. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another case of Slashdotters thinking "people" are like them. Salesforce makes $25bn a year in revenue, it is clear that their strategy of calling people works, even if you personally (and I'd like to think everyone else on this forum) hangs up on them.
By the way if a Salesforce agent contacts one of us then it was mistargeted anyway, IT people don't chose Salesforce, their CxOs choose it and we get told to implement it.
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IT people don't chose Salesforce, their CxOs choose it and we get told to implement it.
Bingo.
I fucking hate salesforce. Several multi-billion dollar companies I have to deal with have large salesforce integrations that drive me fucking crazy.
But I've been to enough conventions to know these guys aren't selling to me- they're selling to our CEO.
Parent entirely misses the point, and is moderated through the moon for it. Keep up the good work, slashdot.
Re:DISEASE in a dot com name - done. (Score:4)
This is another case of Slashdotters thinking "people" are like them. Salesforce makes $25bn a year in revenue, it is clear that their strategy of calling people works, even if you personally (and I'd like to think everyone else on this forum) hangs up on them.
By the way if a Salesforce agent contacts one of us then it was mistargeted anyway, IT people don't chose Salesforce, their CxOs choose it and we get told to implement it.
Correct.
The Salesforce CEO learned at the feet of Larry Ellison at Oracle.
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all scammers make lots of money by spamming/calling randos. sales force is just another scam.
BS (Score:2)
Everything this guy says is shady. I hope his shareholders start holding him accountable.
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For what? He may be a narcissistic douche nozzle, but shareholders care about one thing, and that's the trailing 12month revenue figure has grown continuously for the past 10 years culminating in record numbers just last quarter.
Shareholders will hold him accountable, he's going to get one hell of a big bonus this year.
Sociopath talking to other sociopaths (Score:5, Insightful)
"I've put 4000 families on the street ! These have been the most exciting eight months of my career !"
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100% this. If you want to know how AI is going to be used by big companies, this is the prime example: to reduce headcount. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed, delusional, premature, or outright lying.
Re: Sociopath talking to other sociopaths (Score:2)
Ha... Gotcha... The Business is in Decline... (Score:1)
AI is managing its descent.
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The business which set another record quarter for revenue last month is in decline is it?
Alternate title (Score:2)
Salesforce CEO admits he can't figure out what product or service he can provide with 4000 skilled workers at his command.
Re: Alternate title (Score:2)
Skilled?
Inefficient CEO (Score:2)
Now it's time to replace Benioff.
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Because he's the shareholders golden goose? Why would you replace a CEO who has presided over literal perfect growth? Salesforce basically sets revenue records every quarter.
I'm all for a good joke, but it can't be completely at the expense of economic reality. By all metrics of a CEO he's actually a really good one for the only people who matter (shareholders).
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Why would you replace him? He has set record revenue figures which according to this report comes despite a massive cost cutting spree. That makes him the perfect CEO, trailing 12month revenue figures have never dipped below the previous quarter, YoY growth has always been positive, revenue has always increased growing 40x over the past 10 years.
The only thing the CEO is going to get is a really fat bonus this year.
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He costs money that could be going to the shareholders. It's the final frontier in corporstism. They've figured out how to slash any number of other jobs, especially after great earnings reports. The C-suite shouldn't be exempt.
Lets look at these "savings" again (Score:2)
In a year or two. My prediction is that by then it may well have cost more in lost business than it ever saved.
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Why would that be your prediction? Sales marketing was one of the earliest and most obvious applications for AI. Heck as it is they probably already incorporated a significant amount of automation into it beforehand. My prediction is that Slashdotters don't know as much about this as they think, compared to the person who has headed up Salesforce since it's inception and has achieved literally endless revenue growth over their entire tenure of the company.
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Why would that be your prediction?
Dumb question is dumb. And even you should be able to see that. In addition, your "appeal to authority" is a nice demonstration of a common fallacy.
Now, If you were to look at some actual research on the topic ... naa, forget I wrote that. Not up your alley.
AI isn't working out all that well at Salesforce. (Score:3)
The Ongoing Fallout from a Breach at AI Chatbot Maker Salesloft [krebsonsecurity.com]
Why are Slashdotters acting surprised here? (Score:2)
It seems every second comment thinks this translates to the business is dying (despite setting revenue records), or that the costs are higher than the returns. But this is literally one of the first predicted use cases for AI audio tech. Companies have been using computer generated conversations for a long time, throwing AI at it to generate some word salad and make it sound slightly less robotic was an obvious next step.
Largely people are already easily duped by AI voice. The call centres were *always* goi
My answer to any agentic sales call (Score:2)
Least problematic thing about this...... (Score:4, Informative)
Fewer. Not less.
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How lovely (Score:3)
Yeah, I totally want to do business with a company that values me so much they have a robot call me back.
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If the robot is better than the human, why wouldn't I want the robot calling me back?
The problem is that the robots suck.
It's begun .. (Score:2)
"Heads" (Score:4)
A CEO who thinks of his people as "heads" that can be eliminated, is not someone a real human would *want* to work for.
Worthless and bloated (Score:2)
This just tells me how worthless and bloated Salesforce is. My experience in using Salesforce confirms this. :(
CRM (Score:2)
There were more than 100 million leads that we have not called back
Sounds like they need a better CRM and a few more people
Sounds legit (Score:2)
Instead of 9,000 people answering customers, by the time the customer has got through the AI chat bot, half of them are too frustrated and gave up entirely.
I can see how only half the staff would be required.
Billionaires are sick fucks (Score:3)
People who hoard so much wealth without regard for mankind all need to be rounded up and tossed into active volcanoes. Their decisions only serve their greedy, worthless selves.
When AI CEO? (Score:2)
I'd rather talk to an AI chatbot than a human one (Score:2)
On average, I've actually been very happy with the use of AI chatbots for phone support.
The reason for this is that, for lower tier support (as well as a fair chunk of things I need done that can be handled by lower support), the support agents are largely working off of scripts that they are not allowed to deviate from, nor do they have the expertise to understand what they are doing.
While the AI is not necessarily as intelligent or capable as a human *CAN* be, in practice it is often more capable than the
Overpaid, illterate, sociopath (Score:2)
because I need less heads
Fewer.
You incompetent, self-infatuated, boob.
If you want people to hate AI ... (Score:2)
... just have some shitass ceo say this: .. "during which an estimated 10,000 jobs have been lost to AI, "eight of the most exciting months of my career."".
Hope he *** in the most ****full way.
Cuts 4,000 jobs, most exciting months of my career (Score:2)
ai and job cuts (Score:2)
Which is it? (Score:1)
"I've reduced it from 9,000 head to about 5,000 because I need less heads"
"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"
You need less heads, but you have not had enough people.... and now you are calling them back with a system that won't net any returns from those calls, which will reduce your the number of leads, which is already super inflated and not real, but because that imaginary number is reduced you can
AI Guy Says AI Is Great! (Score:2)
So... the guy selling AI agents anecdotally claims his AI agents have replaced 5,000 human agents inside his own company that makes AI agents? This, my friends, if a voice you can trust.
off color much? (Score:1)
Fewer heads not less (Score:2)
Well..... (Score:1)
Well, that certainly explains why SFDC has been THE SUCK lately.....
Being the CEO "enabled" him to fire people (Score:2)
AI is just the latest excuse/cover story. CEO says "I need less heads" and finds an excuse that "enables" the cuts.
This is how AI is going to end up showing an ROI, but it will be short lived.