Has the commercialization of Agent been verified? Salesforce announced it will hire 2,000 salespeople, up from only 1,000 a month ago
The company also stated that the second-generation Agentforce technology will be available to customers starting in February 2025. This technology is used to create and operate AI agents capable of handling complex issues within Salesforce's Slack communication application
In just one month, cloud software company Salesforce's sales hiring has doubled.
On Tuesday, December 17, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff stated at a company event in San Francisco that the company will hire 2,000 employees to sell AI agent software—just a month ago, the company's plan was to hire only 1,000 people. Benioff said:
“We are working to add thousands of salespeople to help sell these products, and we have received 9,000 applications, which is five times the number of positions we have opened, which is quite astonishing.”
Benioff also mentioned that the company's second-generation Agentforce technology will be available to customers starting in February 2025, which is used to create and operate AI agents capable of handling complex issues within Salesforce's Slack communication application.
Currently, Salesforce's homepage showcases an experimental AI agent that can answer user queries about the company's products. Customers in need of assistance can directly access a chat-based help page, which conducts about 32,000 conversations weekly, of which approximately 5,000 need to be escalated to human customer service, down from 10,000 previously.
On the other hand, Microsoft has begun selling Copilot, but Benioff stated that if you check Microsoft's website for its automated customer support—“you won't find it.”
In response, Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft AI, stated in a statement:
“It's interesting that Benioff says this; Microsoft has one of the largest customer support teams in the world. In customer service, Copilot has improved the speed at which customers solve problems by 11.5%. Our sales team has also seen a tangible impact, with average revenue per salesperson increasing by 9.4%, and saving time to focus on strategic, value-driven work.”