In recent months, Salesforce has joined the increasingly large group of companies that are applying a restructuring of its workforce aimed at taking advantage of AI opportunities . In an interview on the podcast “The Logan Bartlett Show,” Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, stated that, thanks to AI, “I managed to rebalance the number of support personnel. I reduced it from 9,000 employees to about 5,000 because I need less.”
4,000 fewer support employees. According to Benioff, the use of AI agents in the support department has boosted productivity and enhanced the company’s efficiency in customer and sales management . “If we were having this conversation a year ago and you called Salesforce, there would be 9,000 people with whom I would be interacting worldwide in our cloud of services,” he explained.
Benioff highlighted that AI agents are capable of breaking down complex tasks into smaller, manageable components, allowing them to solve these tasks independently. This transformative shift in the company’s operations has sparked significant discussions about the future of work amid the rise of AI.
The human touch. However, despite the considerable reduction in the care and support staff, Salesforce’s co-founder acknowledges that AI isn’t the panacea for every issue. “These great language models can do many things, but they can’t do everything,” Benioff reiterated.
For this reason, Salesforce has retained a substantial team of employees who address the most complex issues. This strategy allows them to assist many clients who, without the capabilities of AI, might have otherwise gone unanswered.
Benioff shared that approximately 50% of customer calls are handled by AI agents, while the remaining 50% are directed to human representatives, especially when AI identifies the need for human intervention. “It is not different from when you are in your Tesla in autonomous driving and suddenly it says: ‘I don’t know what is happening, you take control.’ It’s practically the same,” he commented during the interview.
New resource distribution in Salesforce. Benioff indicated that the company’s restructuring is framed as a reevaluation of roles within the organization. With AI alleviating a significant portion of the personnel demand in the support department, resources can now be reallocated to enhance the R&D and sales departments, promoting company growth.
“There were more than 100 million potential customers to whom we have not responded in Salesforce in the last 26 years because we did not have enough staff. We simply could not return the call. But now we have a sales team that responds to each person who contacts us,” he stated.
Don’t call it relocation, call it dismissal. Although globally, the staffing levels at Salesforce remained at 76,453 employees as reported in January 2025, not all employees who previously filled support and customer service roles were transitioned into sales and R&D departments. Thus, while it is possible that the cut of 4,000 employees doesn’t equate to 4,000 dismissals, it has still resulted in a notable reduction in the workforce.
According to a report published by Bloomberg, during the first months of 2025, Salesforce let go of 1,000 employees amid this internal restructuring, with plans to replace them with AI solutions. However, in October 2024, the same news outlet reported that Salesforce intended to hire 1,000 new employees to bolster sales. This aligns with Benioff’s statements regarding the company’s strategy during his conversation with Logan Bartlett.
This trend towards job displacement due to AI is consistent with predictions made in the ‘Report on the Future of Employment 2025’ by the World Economic Forum. The report highlighted the potential for AI to eliminate 92 million current jobs while simultaneously creating 170 million new roles, resulting in a net job increase of 78 million.
In summary, while the incorporation of AI in companies like Salesforce is significantly reshaping workforce dynamics, it is essential to maintain a balance between technological advancements and the human touch. As the business landscape evolves, organizations must address the challenges and opportunities presented by AI, ensuring they harness its potential while also caring for their workforce. This approach will lead to a more sustainable future, where both technology and human skills coexist harmoniously.