• 亿万富豪、首席执行官贝尼奥夫表示，由人工智能客服接手相关工作后，市值2480亿美元的Salesforce已裁撤约4000个客服岗位。他表示，如今人工智能技术已能处理逾百万次客户对话，自2025年初以来客服成本降低17%，因此，公司“不需要那么多人了”，这一做法与Klarna、微软（Microsoft）类似。而此番言论与他此前声称“人工智能不会引发白领失业潮”的言论截然不同。
ChatGPT问世不过三年。其间，包括马克·贝尼奥夫和黄仁勋在内的多位企业领袖一再坚称，更廉价的人工智能替代不会引发大规模失业。
但现实是，这项技术正导致多家大型企业裁员——其中，Salesforce已裁撤4000个客服岗位，由人工智能客服接手相关工作。
“我重新调整了客服团队规模，”市值2480亿美元的软件公司Salesforce首席执行官马克·贝尼奥夫近日在播客《洛根・巴特利特秀》（The Logan Bartlett Show）中透露，“我已经把员工人数从9000人减到了约5000人，因为我不需要那么多人了。”
他补充说：“如果此番对话发生在一年前，当你致电Salesforce时，全球会有9000名客服人员通过我们的服务云平台为您服务，他们负责管理、创建、读取、更新和删除数据。”而如今，业务量依旧，但“50%由人工智能客服完成，50%由人工客服完成”。
在他看来，这种人机协作模式并非遥不可及的未来。“我完全不觉得这是反乌托邦，”他补充道，“至少对我而言，这就是现实。”
Salesforce发言人向《财富》表示：“今年年初我们上线了help.agentforce.com平台。Agentforce让效能大幅提升，促使客服工单量持续下降，我们就不再需要主动补充客服工程师岗位。我们已成功将数百名员工调配到专业服务、销售和客户成功等其他部门。”
数月间态度发生逆转
数月来，这位科技巨头一直在关注客服岗位自动化。他此前曾对《财富》表示，过去六到九个月，人工智能客服已完成逾百万次客户对话。但当时，他还声称不会大规模裁员。
贝尼奥夫坦言：“我一直在观察行业动态，并和多位公司首席执行官交流，问他们大规模裁员时究竟用了哪些人工智能技术？我认为人工智能能增强人的能力，但未必能取代人类。原因就在于，现有的很多技术依然建立在语言模型之上。也许未来会出现更精准的人工智能模型，但至少目前还没到那一步。现在的重点是人机协作。”
尽管客服部门大幅裁员，他依然坚称这对整个公司而言是一个“意义重大”的时刻，并强调人类仍将发挥核心作用。
贝尼奥夫在播客中表示：“我们现已部署全渠道监管系统，用于协调人工智能客服和人工客服的协同工作。这无疑是过去九个月里Salesforce最令人兴奋的进展。”
况且，Salesforce裁撤客服岗位其实早有征兆。这位科技公司首席执行官曾提到，人工智能客服已承担公司30%至50%的工作量，并且客服与销售两类岗位最易被自动化取代。贝尼奥夫称，通过以先进技术取代人力，Salesforce目前已削减17%的客服成本。
不过，自动化浪潮可能并不止于客服和销售两类岗位。贝尼奥夫透露，他正在审视“所有职能部门”，研究如何让公司真正实现智能体化运营。
多家企业裁员，人工智能员工取而代之
首席执行官们曾矢口否认人工智能快速普及会导致大规模裁员，如今却公开宣布以人工智能取代人工的计划。在行业巨头推动岗位自动化的浪潮下，科技企业今年裁员总数已超6.4万人。
7月初，微软宣布将裁员约9000人，这是该公司自2023年以来最大规模的裁员。尽管这家市值3.74万亿美元的公司财务状况良好——上季度净利润同比增长18%，但今年裁员总数已达惊人的1.5万人。然而，并非所有为公司创造利润的员工都能保住饭碗：最新裁员预计将波及销售、客户服务岗位以及Xbox游戏部门。
Meta也加入了这场自动化浪潮，于今年2月裁员3600人。首席执行官马克·扎克伯格甚至表示，人工智能今年内或许就能具备“中级工程师”的编程能力。谷歌（Google）同样毫不避讳地裁撤了Android、Pixel和Chrome等部门的数百个岗位。谈及大规模裁员的原因，这两家硅谷巨头均声称，需要精简人力运营并加大对人工智能的投入。
贝尼奥夫也绝非首位专门在客服岗位上动刀的企业领袖。金融科技公司Klarna的人工智能客服已承担了700名人工客服的工作量。而在受生成式人工智能冲击最严重的职业中，销售代表和客服人员分列第四和第六位。
贝尼奥夫今年早些时候在接受《财富》采访时表示：“我们积累了大量潜在客户线索，根本无法全部跟进。销售人员基本上只能挑选部分线索回访。成千上万乃至数十万条线索始终没有得到跟进。但在智能体时代，这种情况将不复存在。每条线索都能得到及时跟进。”（*）
译者：刘进龙
审校：汪皓
• 亿万富豪、首席执行官贝尼奥夫表示，由人工智能客服接手相关工作后，市值2480亿美元的Salesforce已裁撤约4000个客服岗位。他表示，如今人工智能技术已能处理逾百万次客户对话，自2025年初以来客服成本降低17%，因此，公司“不需要那么多人了”，这一做法与Klarna、微软（Microsoft）类似。而此番言论与他此前声称“人工智能不会引发白领失业潮”的言论截然不同。
ChatGPT问世不过三年。其间，包括马克·贝尼奥夫和黄仁勋在内的多位企业领袖一再坚称，更廉价的人工智能替代不会引发大规模失业。
但现实是，这项技术正导致多家大型企业裁员——其中，Salesforce已裁撤4000个客服岗位，由人工智能客服接手相关工作。
“我重新调整了客服团队规模，”市值2480亿美元的软件公司Salesforce首席执行官马克·贝尼奥夫近日在播客《洛根・巴特利特秀》（The Logan Bartlett Show）中透露，“我已经把员工人数从9000人减到了约5000人，因为我不需要那么多人了。”
他补充说：“如果此番对话发生在一年前，当你致电Salesforce时，全球会有9000名客服人员通过我们的服务云平台为您服务，他们负责管理、创建、读取、更新和删除数据。”而如今，业务量依旧，但“50%由人工智能客服完成，50%由人工客服完成”。
在他看来，这种人机协作模式并非遥不可及的未来。“我完全不觉得这是反乌托邦，”他补充道，“至少对我而言，这就是现实。”
Salesforce发言人向《财富》表示：“今年年初我们上线了help.agentforce.com平台。Agentforce让效能大幅提升，促使客服工单量持续下降，我们就不再需要主动补充客服工程师岗位。我们已成功将数百名员工调配到专业服务、销售和客户成功等其他部门。”
数月间态度发生逆转
数月来，这位科技巨头一直在关注客服岗位自动化。他此前曾对《财富》表示，过去六到九个月，人工智能客服已完成逾百万次客户对话。但当时，他还声称不会大规模裁员。
贝尼奥夫坦言：“我一直在观察行业动态，并和多位公司首席执行官交流，问他们大规模裁员时究竟用了哪些人工智能技术？我认为人工智能能增强人的能力，但未必能取代人类。原因就在于，现有的很多技术依然建立在语言模型之上。也许未来会出现更精准的人工智能模型，但至少目前还没到那一步。现在的重点是人机协作。”
尽管客服部门大幅裁员，他依然坚称这对整个公司而言是一个“意义重大”的时刻，并强调人类仍将发挥核心作用。
贝尼奥夫在播客中表示：“我们现已部署全渠道监管系统，用于协调人工智能客服和人工客服的协同工作。这无疑是过去九个月里Salesforce最令人兴奋的进展。”
况且，Salesforce裁撤客服岗位其实早有征兆。这位科技公司首席执行官曾提到，人工智能客服已承担公司30%至50%的工作量，并且客服与销售两类岗位最易被自动化取代。贝尼奥夫称，通过以先进技术取代人力，Salesforce目前已削减17%的客服成本。
不过，自动化浪潮可能并不止于客服和销售两类岗位。贝尼奥夫透露，他正在审视“所有职能部门”，研究如何让公司真正实现智能体化运营。
多家企业裁员，人工智能员工取而代之
首席执行官们曾矢口否认人工智能快速普及会导致大规模裁员，如今却公开宣布以人工智能取代人工的计划。在行业巨头推动岗位自动化的浪潮下，科技企业今年裁员总数已超6.4万人。
7月初，微软宣布将裁员约9000人，这是该公司自2023年以来最大规模的裁员。尽管这家市值3.74万亿美元的公司财务状况良好——上季度净利润同比增长18%，但今年裁员总数已达惊人的1.5万人。然而，并非所有为公司创造利润的员工都能保住饭碗：最新裁员预计将波及销售、客户服务岗位以及Xbox游戏部门。
Meta也加入了这场自动化浪潮，于今年2月裁员3600人。首席执行官马克·扎克伯格甚至表示，人工智能今年内或许就能具备“中级工程师”的编程能力。谷歌（Google）同样毫不避讳地裁撤了Android、Pixel和Chrome等部门的数百个岗位。谈及大规模裁员的原因，这两家硅谷巨头均声称，需要精简人力运营并加大对人工智能的投入。
贝尼奥夫也绝非首位专门在客服岗位上动刀的企业领袖。金融科技公司Klarna的人工智能客服已承担了700名人工客服的工作量。而在受生成式人工智能冲击最严重的职业中，销售代表和客服人员分列第四和第六位。
贝尼奥夫今年早些时候在接受《财富》采访时表示：“我们积累了大量潜在客户线索，根本无法全部跟进。销售人员基本上只能挑选部分线索回访。成千上万乃至数十万条线索始终没有得到跟进。但在智能体时代，这种情况将不复存在。每条线索都能得到及时跟进。”（*）
译者：刘进龙
审校：汪皓
• Billionaire CEO Marc Benioff said his $248 billion Salesforce has cut about 4,000 customer service roles as AI agents step in to do the work. Just like Klarna and Microsoft, the Silicon Valley mogul revealed he just “needs less heads” now that the technology can handle over a million consumer conversations and has reduced support costs by 17% since around the start of 2025. It’s a change of tune from Benioff’s previous comments that AI wouldn’t lead to a white-collar wipeout.
ChatGPT launched only three years ago. Since then, leaders including Marc Benioff and Jensen Huang have been adamant that cheaper alternatives to labor won’t cause mass unemployment.
But in reality, the technology is slashing human headcounts at major companies—including Salesforce, which has cut 4,000 of its customer support roles for AI agents to pick up the work.
“I was able to rebalance my headcount on my support,” Marc Benioff, CEO of the $248 billion computer software company, recently revealed on the podcast The Logan Bartlett Show. “I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads.
“If we were having this conversation a year ago and you were calling Salesforce, there would be 9,000 people that you would be interacting with globally on our service cloud, and they would be managing, creating, reading, updating, deleting data,” he added. Today, those same interactions are happening, but “50% are with agents, 50% are with humans.”
And he doesn’t see his hybrid AI-human workforce as an otherworldly future. “I don’t think it’s dystopian at all,” he added. “This is reality, at least for me.
“At the start of this year we deployed help.agentforce.com. Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we’ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline, and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles,” a Salesforce spokesperson tells Fortune. “We’ve successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success.”
A change of tune from months ago
The tech titan has shown an interest in automating customer support jobs for some months now, previously telling Fortune that AI agents have completed over a million conversations with customers over the past six to nine months. But at the time, he said that mass layoffs weren’t on the table.
“I keep looking around, talking to CEOs, asking, What AI are they using for these big layoffs? I think AI augments people, but I don’t know if it necessarily replaces them,” Benioff revealed. “The reason is because a lot of this is still built on word models. Maybe there’s a future AI model that will be more accurate, but that’s not where we are right now. This is about humans and AI working together.”
And while the customer service department gets heavily slashed, he’s still adamant that it’s an “exciting” time for the wider company—and that humans will remain at the core of the function.
“There’s also an omni-channel supervisor now that’s helping those agents and those humans work together,” Benioff said on the podcast. “And this is the most exciting thing that’s happened in the last nine months for Salesforce.”
Plus, Salesforce’s elimination of support roles in particular should come as no surprise. The tech CEO has said that agents are already doing 30% to 50% of work within the company and that two roles in particular had the potential to be automated by AI agents: support and sales. By pushing humans out in favor of the advanced technology, Benioff said Salesforce has reduced its support cost by 17% so far.
But further automation beyond sales and support could be on the cards as the Salesforce boss revealed he’s looking at “every single function” to see how it can become an agentic business.
Other companies slashing staff in favor of AI workers
CEOs once denied the fact that rapid AI adoption will slash staffers across organizations, but now leaders are openly sharing their plans to replace humans with bots. More than 64,000 have been laid off across the tech sector this year as industry heavyweights lead the charge in job automation.
In early July, Microsoft announced that it will cut about 9,000 roles—its largest round of layoffs since 2023. That plan brings the $3.74 trillion company’s total layoffs this year to a whopping 15,000 jobs, despite the company doing well financially; Microsoft posted a 18% year-to-year increase in net income last quarter. However, not all workers get to stick around after bringing home the bacon: The latest round of cuts is expected to hit sales and customer-facing roles, alongside the Xbox gaming division.
Meta joined in on the automation push, laying off 3,600 employees in February, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg even said that AI could be “effectively be a sort of mid-level engineer” sometime this year, with the ability to code. Google also wasn’t shy about reducing hundreds of roles across its Android, Pixel, and Chrome sectors. In reasoning about the mass firings, both Silicon Valley giants claimed the need to streamline human operations and invest more in AI.
And Benioff is far from being the first leader to cut down specifically customer service jobs; fintech company Klarna’s AI agents are doing the work of 700 customer service employees. And among the professions most impacted by generative AI, sales representatives rank fourth and customer service agents rank sixth.
“We have so many leads that we can’t follow up on them all. Salespeople basically cherry-pick what leads they want to call back. Thousands of leads, tens of thousands of leads, hundreds of thousands of leads have never been called back,” Benioff told Fortune earlier this year. “But in the agentic world, there’s no excuse for that. Every lead can be followed up on.”