"Our organization is being radically reshaped," claimed Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.
The CEO made the statement in a Financial Times op-ed, shedding light on the company's employee transformation.
In doing so, Benioff revealed that 51 percent of his company's Q1 hiring was internal, with "thousands" of employees being redeployed.
Many of those redeployed employees likely come from the company's customer service team, with Salesforce hinting at plans to redeploy 4,500 support agents earlier this year.
While Gartner recently warned that half of organizations will abandon plans to reduce their customer service workforce due to AI, Salesforce appears to have faced few obstructions.
Indeed, by already automating "85 percent" of its customer queries, Salesforce is seemingly starting to take actions that aim to effectively halve its support team and reutilize them.
While Benioff didn't delve into the specifics, hundreds of positions are currently open as sales personnel, customer success staff, and account executives on the Salesforce website.
If Salesforce is expanding these teams, customer service workers could make for a nice fit.
Despite being hazy on the details, Benioff did add that hiring of engineers has stalled, as AI continues to be a catalyst for "massive change". He continued:
As the CEO of a technology company that helps customers deploy AI, I believe this revolution can usher in an era of unprecedented growth and impact.
"At the same time, I believe humans must remain at the center of the story."
Salesforce's Big Pivot Makes Employee Transformation Necessary
With Agentforce, Salesforce is making an almighty pivot from a business that serves software to the front office to one that serves AI agents to the enterprise.
That pivot requires new partnerships, skills, and knowledge. It's not as simple as redeploying customer service staff to unlock new business efficiencies, and Salesforce understands that.
