“I think that there’s a broad misunderstanding of artificial intelligence and how it relates to data management and applications,” Marc Benioff says during a press conference. Salesforce’s charismatic leader was responding to Klarna’s move away from using both the CRM platform and Workday in favor of internally built AI and automation. Another consequence of the Swedish fintech company’s decision is its workforce—a quarter will be let go.
Klarna’s CEO Sebastien Siemiatkowski described the move as an effort to “consolidate,” and AI will help his company standardize and create a lightweight tech stack, allowing it to operate more effectively.
However, Benioff expressed concern about Siemiatkowski’s plan, questioning how the data will be managed. “How is he managing and sharing his information? How is he achieving compliance governance of his company? What is his institutional memory? Does he have a new type of data management system that he’s using a new type of application? How is he doing this?”
Although Salesforce is embracing AI and enabling the development of autonomous agents through its Agentforce platform, Benioff stresses that humans play a critical part in a business’s customer relationship.
Humans aren’t going away. One of the key things about Salesforce and Agentforce, it’s deeply integrated with our applications…It’s a seamless handoff between the agent and the app. I think this is so important…
He would go on to reference the Royal Bank of Canada as an example:
They’ve got, I think 20,000 or 30,000 salespeople on [Salesforce] and 3,000 to 5,000 people in their call [and contact] centers. This is about making their employees better, more optimized, [and] more efficient. They still need to comply with [Know Your Customer] regulations with the government…Not everyone can look at my account balance. Only certain people can. It has to be done through a sharing model. All these things are still in place. All of the key fundamentals of the platform are critical. That’s why I think it’s so important that, first and foremost, there’s a platform, and there’s a Data Cloud, and there’s these applications, and then we’re running these agents on top of that core platform. This is going to give companies the ability to manage and share their information in a whole new way. And I think that is very powerful and very critical.
Salesforce Chief Product Officer David Schmaier echoed his boss’ sentiment, saying that while AI is powerful, complex business processes in the enterprise still require human engagement. Companies manage a wide range of activities, such as routing leads, handling sales pipelines, fulfilling customer orders and managing vast inventories—he believes AI cannot handle such responsibilities without supporting foundational systems and workflows.
Of course, Salesforce needs to react to Klarna’s move. Not having a solid counterargument to Siemiatkowski’s claim could reflect poorly on investors, especially days ahead of Salesforce’s customer conference, dampening what Benioff hoped would be a positive reception of Agentforce’s introduction. On the other hand, the SaaS industry is looking to Salesforce as a market leader and Benioff’s response could be perceived as a bellwether of where things are heading.
Benioff acknowledges his team hasn’t been able to connect with Siemiatkowski. He concluded his remarks by saying, “This is a moment where the technology is awesome, but it’s about humans with AI driving customer success together.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.