{"id":38344,"date":"2024-12-20T13:15:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T21:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=38344"},"modified":"2024-12-20T13:15:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T21:15:53","slug":"sfs-salesforce-begins-2000-worker-hiring-surge-for-selling-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/12\/20\/sfs-salesforce-begins-2000-worker-hiring-surge-for-selling-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"SF’s Salesforce begins 2,000-worker ‘hiring surge’ for selling AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TECHNOLOGY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Stephen Council<\/a>,Tech ReporterDec 18, 2024 (SFGate.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Salesforce\u2019s new artificial intelligence product<\/a> is billed as a labor replacer, meant to answer questions and tackle tasks previously fielded by customer service reps. But the San Francisco tech giant still needs a lot of humans to hawk that product \u2014 enough so that CEO Marc Benioff<\/a> just announced a massive hiring spree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch More<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"exp-customer-logo\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In November, Bloomberg<\/a> reported that Salesforce<\/a> was planning to hire 1,000 more salespeople to sell its \u201cAgentforce\u201d product to clients. Then, on Tuesday, CNBC<\/a> had a new number straight from Benioff himself: 2,000 new hires all for those AI sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re adding another couple of thousand salespeople to help sell these products,\u201d the CEO said at a San Francisco event, per the outlet. \u201cWe already had 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 positions that we\u2019ve opened up. It\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salesforce spokesperson Annie Vincent confirmed Benioff\u2019s statement to SFGATE on Wednesday, calling the plan a \u201chiring surge for Account Executives\u201d and saying it began in November. The hiring is global, including in Salesforce\u2019s home city, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The huge buildup is a testament to Benioff\u2019s focus on the relatively unproven \u201cAgentforce\u201d technology, which the customer relationship management company hyped up incessantly at September\u2019s Dreamforce<\/a> conference before rolling out in October. \u201cAgentforce\u201d is a layer of Salesforce\u2019s software package, providing customers who buy in with quick-to-set-up \u201cagents\u201d that can complete various simple tasks in sales, marketing, commerce and more. (SFGATE<\/a> wrote about the tool\u2019s potential to push out entry-level workers back in September.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, in a CNBC video interview<\/a> published Wednesday alongside Salesforce\u2019s announcement of \u201cAgentforce 2.0,\u201d Benioff sounded almost comically optimistic talking about the product. \u201cI\u2019ve never been more excited about anything in my entire career,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing really the future of work itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Salesforce has used \u201cAgentforce\u201d to cut the number of customer questions that escalate to a human from about 10,000 to 5,000 out of around 36,000 queries each week. He touted the prospect of replacing people with the AI product: \u201cWe can have less support agents, human support agents, more digital support agents. We can mix our human labor with our digital labor in a new way and create an incredible new Salesforce.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The company has sold \u201cAgentforce\u201d to 1,000 customers so far, he said in the video interview, and the new mass of salespeople will no doubt grow that group. On Salesforce\u2019s careers site<\/a>, the keyword \u201caccount executive\u201d currently prompts 874 jobs, with 84 in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though not unique, the hiring effort is a break from a general trend of layoffs and \u201cleanness\u201d in Bay Area tech. Salesforce laid off<\/a> 10% of its workforce in 2023, including at least 1,150 assigned to San Francisco, SFGATE<\/a> reported. But in September of that year, Benioff told Bloomberg<\/a> he would be adding 3,300 workers, mainly for its data cloud, engineering and sales teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at\u00a0stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Stephen Council<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TECH REPORTER<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Council is the tech reporter at SFGATE. He has covered technology and business for The Information, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and CalMatters, where his reporting won a San Francisco Press Club award.Signal: 628-204-5452
<\/strong>Email: stephen.council@sfgate.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TECHNOLOGY By\u00a0Stephen Council,Tech ReporterDec 18, 2024 (SFGate.com) Salesforce\u2019s new artificial intelligence product is billed as a labor replacer, meant to answer questions and tackle tasks previously fielded by customer service reps. But the San Francisco tech giant still needs a lot of humans to hawk that product \u2014 enough so that CEO Marc… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38345,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38344\/revisions\/38345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}