Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who has been among the most vocal evangelists for agentic AI, told Logan Bartlett on his most recent podcast that AI agents have replaced 4,000 human employees and are helping the company get more leads into its sales pipeline than they have ever been able to before.
Benioff said that Salesforce, as “customer zero” for its agentic service and support product, has seen a significant affect on the number of human support agents required to drive the same level of productivity and satisfaction.
“I was able to rebalance my head count on my support,” he said. “I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads.”
He called it “the most exciting eight months” of his career.
Benioff also noted the impact agentic AI has had on the company’s sales pipeline.
“There have been more than a hundred million leads that we have not called back at Salesforce over the last 26 years because we have not had enough people,” he explained. “We just couldn’t call them back. But we have agentic sales that can now call back every person that contacts us. Just for our own company we’re doing about 10,000 leads a week, having conversations, turning them into pipeline.”