Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently revealed a massive reduction in the company’s customer support workforce, cutting 4,000 positions and shrinking the team
from 9,000 to 5,000 employees, which is nearly a 45 per cent reduction. This major shift comes as AI agents now manage 50 per cent of all customer interactions, transforming how Salesforce handles support services. “I was able to rebalance my head count on my support,” Benioff said on the Logan Bartlett podcast released on Friday. “I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads.” AI Revolutionises Customer Support And Sales The move to integrate AI extends beyond support and into Salesforce’s sales operations. Benioff disclosed that over the past 26 years, Salesforce accumulated a backlog of more than 100 million uncalled sales leads due to understaffing. Now, AI-powered agents are actively reaching out to these leads, closing gaps that human teams couldn’t handle. The company employs an “omnichannel supervisor” system that coordinates between AI and human agents, with AI recognising when to escalate tasks to human staff. Benioff likened this collaboration to Tesla’s self-driving cars, where the system autonomously handles driving until it encounters an uncertain situation and hands control back to the driver: “You're in your Tesla and all of a sudden it's self-driving and goes, 'Oh, I don't know, actually know what's happening, you take over.’” From AI Optimism To Workforce Realities This workforce downsizing contrasts sharply with Benioff’s statements just two months earlier in July 2025, when he dismissed fears of AI-driven mass layoffs. At that time, he insisted AI would augment rather than replace workers, highlighting AI’s current accuracy limitations and the ongoing need for human oversight: “The humans are not going away.” He also noted that Salesforce would not increase hiring for software engineers or support agents, focusing instead on adding sales personnel to help customers adopt AI tools. Despite employing over 76,000 people across all divisions as of January 2025, the 4,000 job cuts in support represent about 5 per cent of Salesforce’s total workforce.
