Marc Benioff Said AI Was Easy. A Team at Salesforce Proved Him Wrong

Salesforce’s CEO said this would be the ‘absolute year of Agentforce,’ the name of his company’s AI product. It hasn’t turned out that way, as the enterprise software pioneer faces skeptical customers and greater competition from its peers as well as AI startups.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff via Getty. Art via Clark Miller

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was upset.

Last fall, one of his technical teams told large Salesforce customers that using Agentforce, the software firm’s new artificial intelligence for automating customer service and other functions, would require extensive planning. The product information the Salesforce team shared with those customers acknowledged the complexity of making the AI perform well.

That message contradicted Benioff, a charismatic salesman who had been telling customers that using the AI was a cinch and they could set up AI agents to handle customer service discussions and other tasks in minutes.