ChatGpt was released just three years ago. Since then, leaders, including Mark Benioff and Jensen Fan, have asserted that cheaper alternatives to labor will not cause mass unemployment.
But in reality, the technology is cutting down the human resources of major companies, including Salesforce, which cut 4,000 customer support roles for AI agents to pick up work.
“I was able to balance my people with my support,” Marc Benioff, CEO of the $248 billion computer software company, was recently revealed on a podcast. Logan Bartlettshaw. “I reduced that from 9,000 to about 5,000.
“If you had this conversation a year ago and you called Salesforce, there are 9,000 people who interact globally in our service cloud. Today, those same interactions are happening, but “50% are with agents, 50% are with humans.”
And he does not see his hybrid AI and human labor as a different world future. “I don't think I'm a dystopian,” he added. “This is a reality, at least for me.
“We deployed help.agentforce.com earlier this year. We found that the number of support cases has been reduced due to the benefits and efficiency of AgentForce. luck. “We have managed to relocate hundreds of employees into other areas, including professional services, sales and customer success.”
Changes to songs from several months ago
Tech Titan has been interested in automating customer support jobs for several months, and has said before luck AI agents have completed over 1 million conversations with customers over the past six to nine months. But at the time he said there were no massive layoffs on the table.
“Do you keep looking around, talking to the CEO and asking what kind of AI they're using for these big layoffs? I think AI will increase people, but I don't know if that will necessarily replace them,” Benioff revealed. “The reason is that a lot of this is still based on word models. Maybe there's a more accurate future AI model, but that's not where we are now. This is because humans and AI work together.”
And while the customer service division has been cut drastically, he still asserts that it is a “exciting” time for the wider company.
“We now have omnichannel supervisors, which help these agents and humans work together,” Benioff said on the podcast. “And this is the most exciting thing that's happened in Salesforce in the last nine months.”
Furthermore, it is not surprising, especially the elimination of Salesforce's support roles. Tech CEO says that agents are already doing 30% to 50% of their jobs within the company, and that two roles in particular could be automated by AI agents. Support and sales. By pushing people out of their advanced technology, Benioff said Salesforce has reduced its support costs by 17% so far.
However, as Salesforce bosses have revealed they are looking at “all features” and see how it can become an agent business, there is a possibility that more automation beyond sales and support will be on the cards.
Other companies will cut staff in favour of AI workers
While CEOs once deny the fact that rapid AI adoption cuts staff across the organization, leaders now openly share plans to replace humans with bots. Over 64,000 people have been fired across the tech sector this year as the heavyweights in the industry lead job automation billing.
In early July, Microsoft announced that it would cut its role of around 9,000, the largest layoff since 2023. The plan will bring a whopping 15,000 jobs to a total layoff of 3.74 trillion companies this year, despite the financial success. Microsoft recorded an annual increase in net profit for the last quarter of 18%. However, not all workers stick to it after bringing back bacon. Alongside the Xbox gaming division, the latest cut rounds are expected to reach sales and customer-facing roles.
Meta joined the automation push, firing 3,600 employees in February, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that AI could “become an effective mid-level engineer” within the year, and even his ability to code. Google was also not shy about reducing hundreds of roles across the Android, Pixel and Chrome sectors. In his reasoning about mass firing, both Silicon Valley giants argued for the need to streamline human operations and invest more in AI.
And Benioff is not the first leader specifically to cut down customer service jobs. Fintech Company Klarna's AI agent works with 700 customer service employees. Furthermore, among the professions most affected by the generation AI, sales representatives ranked 4th and customer service agents ranked 6th.
“We have so many leads that we can't follow up on all of them. Salespeople basically cherry pick the leads they want to call back. Thousands of leads, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of leads have never been called back,” Benioff said. luck Early this year. “But in the agent world, there's no excuse. You can follow up with every lead.”
