Are Entry-Level Salesforce Admins at Risk Due to AI?

Salesforce Administrators are the backbone of many orgs, keeping everything clean, functional, and user-friendly.

But the role might be coming under threat due to increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence tools, which can perform basic admin tasks after being given simple prompts in natural language.

Prompts, Not Clicks

The creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, recently unveiled its “Operator” agent, which can use its own browser to perform tasks.

OpenAI said on January 23 that the product – which is one of the company’s first agents – was a “research preview”, meaning it was limited and would evolve depending on user feedback.

The company said, “Operator can be asked to handle a wide variety of repetitive browser tasks such as filling out forms, ordering groceries, and even creating memes. The ability to use the same interfaces and tools that humans interact with on a daily basis broadens the utility of AI, helping people save time on everyday tasks while opening up new engagement opportunities for businesses.”

OpenAI said that it would be made available to ChatGPT Pro users in the United States at operator.chatgpt.com⁠, but they plan to expand its use to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users, and integrate the capabilities into ChatGPT in the future.

A Bad Time to Get Your Admin Cert?

While the makers of AI like to talk about how revolutionary their products are, they are often quick to reassure would-be adopters that humans will always be in the loop, essentially checking the robot’s work.

This might mean that senior developers and administrators can rest assured – for now – that there will need to be a steady hand at the wheel overseeing the work that the AI produces.

But those looking to get into the Salesforce ecosystem at the moment might be a little more nervous as AI becomes sophisticated enough to perform basic, repetitive tasks – the kind which junior team members are typically trusted to carry out.

Igor Kudryk, Founder of Learn Apex, posted a demonstration of Operator for his 26,000 LinkedIn followers, telling the AI to perform simple, routine admin tasks.

This included creating a custom object, creating a tab for it, and creating a few dummy records, all of which were completed.

During the demo, Igor asked the agent to create a custom object in Salesforce, which it handled easily enough.

“This is for the people who say that the developer is going to be automated first. No, look at this; this is way easier than automating a developer,” Igor said.

But he then asked it to create a tab for the custom object, which it completed, but the AI became stuck in a loop, leading Igor to say, “This is the problem. It’s not even close to automating anyone.”

OpenAI stresses that Operator is currently in an early research preview, meaning that it’s already capable of handling a wide range of tasks, but it’s still learning – and may make mistakes.

It may also be the case that Operator has likely not seen many web pages before, so it could improve as it becomes more experienced as more people use it, providing better feedback.

The tech company says that it currently faces “challenges” with complex interfaces like creating slideshows or managing calendars.

“Early user feedback will play a vital role in enhancing its accuracy, reliability, and safety, helping us make Operator better for everyone,” the company says.

“If a Junior Admin Is Just Creating Fields All Day, That’s Madness”

Founder and CEO of Groundwork Apps, Paul Battisson, said that some basic tasks that a junior admin might do, like creating a field or an invoice, can be done by an AI. However, jobs like this are only 1% of the role.

An important part of the admin job is interacting with other humans, understanding what it really is they want, and then collaborating to achieve that goal – not simply following rote instructions, he added.

Paul told Salesforce Ben: “Every time I’ve sat down with a customer to build a report, it’s been a collaboration. It’s been me going, ‘What do you think of this report?’ and them going, ‘Okay, what I want to see is this…’ Then we go back and forth on it because it’s a visual thing. You can see change.”

“I can see [AI] taking away some tasks, but if your job as a junior admin is just creating fields and objects all day, then I’m going to ask what is going on in your environment anyway because that is just madness.”

“I definitely think that there’ll be more and more AI stuff making it easier as an assistant, but to me, there are two things. One: Has it truly understood what’s required? And two: How far down the path can it get me?”

“Juniors start off doing junior things… and there are always seniors who sit with the junior afterwards to say, ‘Great, so how have you done this? Did you think of doing that? And why didn’t you do this? You should add that in there’, and that’s still going to be needed.”

“Those Tasks Will Be Obsolete, I’m Sure of It”

Founder of Salesforce Break, Andy Engin Utkan, thinks that jobs for admins, developers, and consultants are not going to be the same in the next two years and are going to “change completely”.

He said, “One thing that’s for sure is that easy clicks are going to go away or be handed down to AI. That’s fine. But does that really mean the admin job is going away?”

Andy added that there is a spectrum of attitudes and personalities, essentially boiling down to the optimist and the pessimist.

He said, “If they are pessimists, they think their job is going to go away tomorrow, and then they are going into this kind of attitude where they don’t really want to learn anything. They don’t really want to do anything about it.”

Andy believes that something worth considering with tools like OpenAI’s Operator is what the implications will be for Salesforce’s licensing model.

He said, “If I have access to the operator for $200 a month to perform all those things… then I can avoid the API access license level and then just hook up my OpenAI operator to my user license and perform all that stuff, right?”

Andy added, “Obviously, a good part of the admin job is to click through and then make configuration changes. It’s going to be a big time-saver, but the piece that’s not going to go away with that is: who’s going to talk to the business, the requirements holders, the users, understand the needs, and then translate those into clicks?”

Salesforce MVP Hall of Famer and Independent Consultant Louise Lockie told Salesforce Ben that there is some expectation that people will be able to reduce headcount through the use of AI tools.

She added, “My thoughts around admins, in particular, is that the low-hanging fruit will definitely be automated. Part of the admin’s job is to automate as much as possible, and this certainly falls into that. “Admin” is such a general name for people at all different levels doing all sorts of different things.”

Louise said there are a lot of admins out there that are basically sales support or sales ops, so their job is to write reports for the business, create new users, maybe add the odd field and tasks like that.

“Certainly, to me, that low-hanging fruit will go quite quickly,” she added. “And when I talked about this at my recent Women in Tech event, I said to people that it’s all about positioning yourself. So if you’re asked how you spend your average day or month, don’t lead with, ‘We have a turnover of X amount, and I’m creating new users,’ or ‘I’m reassigning accounts,’ or ‘I’m creating reports’. Focus on the things that the human has value with, that need judgment, that need business and technical knowledge that’s not easily consumed by AI.”

Louise said that there is “definitely” going to be a threat to some admin responsibilities, but at a business where there is one sole admin, that job can’t realistically be at risk because the entirety of the role cannot be taken over.

She added, “So my advice to admins would be… don’t say, ‘I spend all my days supporting sales, creating reports, extracting commissions, putting that into a spreadsheet, and then sending it around,’ because those tasks will be obsolete – I’m sure of it.”

Final Thoughts

It seems that AI tools are not yet in a position to replace Salesforce Admins, apart from performing the most basic entry-level tasks.

But as these tools become better, cheaper, and more readily available, it will likely be bad news for someone looking to break into their first role as an administrator.