Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has revealed that the company has cut 4,000 customer support jobs, replacing them with artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Speaking on The Logan Bartlett Show podcast, Benioff explained that Salesforce’s support staff was reduced from 9,000 to 5,000 as AI-powered solutions, like Agentforce, are increasingly handling customer queries.
Balancing Humans and AI
Benioff emphasized that AI is not eliminating work but transforming how it is done. Currently, about half of Salesforce’s service interactions are managed by AI agents, while the other half remain human-driven. He dismissed fears of a dystopian workforce, calling it “reality” and noting that AI helps improve efficiency without completely replacing human involvement.
Redeployment of Staff
In response to concerns about job losses, Salesforce stated that it has successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into roles across professional services, sales, and customer success. The company highlighted that the launch of help.agentforce.com earlier this year has reduced support case volumes, eliminating the need to backfill certain roles.
AI’s Growing Role in Salesforce
Benioff has consistently spoken about AI’s growing role within the company. Just months ago, he shared that AI is already handling 30–50% of Salesforce’s work, including engineering, coding, and customer service tasks. The transition underscores Salesforce’s broader strategy of using AI not only as a product offering for clients but also as an operational backbone within its own systems.
