Salesforce Lays Off 4,000 Employees As AI Handles Half Of Customer Service Tasks

Salesforce has cut 4,000 customer support positions, reducing its support staff from 9,000 to 5,000, as artificial intelligence (AI) now manages approximately 50 percent of customer interactions.

The announcement was made by CEO Marc Benioff during an appearance on the Logan Bartlett podcast. "I was able to rebalance my head count on my support," Benioff stated. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads."

The layoffs represent a 45 percent reduction in the customer support division of the cloud software company. Salesforce employs an 'omnichannel supervisor' platform to coordinate between AI and human agents, enabling AI to transfer tasks to human staff when necessary. Benioff compared this process to Tesla's self-driving technology, where AI recognises its limitations and prompts human intervention.

Additionally, Salesforce is leveraging AI to address a backlog of over 100 million uncalled sales leads accumulated over 26 years due to limited staffing. Benioff noted that an 'agentic sales' system now contacts every lead, significantly improving operational efficiency.

The workforce reduction follows Benioff's July 2025 comments in a Fortune interview, where he stated that AI would augment rather than replace workers, emphasising that 'the humans are not going away.' As of January 2025, Salesforce employed 76,453 people globally, with the recent cuts accounting for roughly 5 percent of its total workforce.