A short while ago, ChatGPT burst onto the scene as a new player in generative AI. These tools have been around for a little while, but this one seems to have caught the public eye – it’s received a lot of attention, particularly in the Salesforce space. The number one question I hear asked about ChatGPT is this: “Is it going to replace a Salesforce Admin?”
My first thought was no, of course not – it can’t possibly be as good as a human! But then I figured (given that my entire job and income is potentially on the line if I’m wrong!) that perhaps I should look into this a bit more.
So, I asked ChatGPT the big question: “Will ChatGPT replace human Salesforce Administrators?” I suspected the answer might be an attempt to placate me into a less suspicious frame of mind. After all, in the event that ChatGPT is malicious and plotting to overthrow the entire human race, why would it answer my question honestly? As expected, this is the answer I got:
While this is very well written, more testing is needed. In order to understand whether there’s any likelihood of ChatGPT and other AI bots taking Salesforce Admin jobs, I decided to give it a few real-live questions that a user might ask. We’ll compare the answer that ChatGPT provides against the answer provided by an experienced Salesforce Admin.
User Request 1
In Salesforce, My SalesOps person needs to be able to move Opportunities out of Closed Won. How do I make her an Admin user so she can do this?
SF Admin Answer:
The request is to move Opportunities out of Closed Won – this is highly unusual and suspect in and of itself. That being said, a user does not need to be an admin to do this, and we would not give out admin permissions to do this task. In addition, further follow up is needed to find out why we need to move already won opps back to some other Stage.
ChatGPT Answer:
My Thoughts on the ChatGPT Answer:
It’s great for the first two paragraphs – no, we don’t give people “Admin” status just so they can edit something, even something big like Opportunity Stage. After that, it kind of goes off the rails. The org may or may not have record types, so all those related instructions may or may not be valid.
User Request 2
In Salesforce, I want a drop-down menu, but one of the options is open text so that sales reps can type in some text if their option isn’t already in the menu.
Salesforce Admin Answer:
That’s not possible. The closest thing we can do is create the drop-down menu, with a value called “Other”.
Then, a separate text box called “Other” requires the user to fill it out with a validation rule.
ChatGPT Answer:
My Thoughts on the ChatGPT Answer:
Where did that even come from? Has that ever been possible in Salesforce? For the record, I did try to follow those steps and I couldn’t do it anywhere. I also asked ChatGPT for a source on that answer and it could not provide one. While I briefly questioned my own sanity for a while, this is just wrong.
User Request 3
In Salesforce, I want to convert my Leads to a custom object rather than the Opportunity, Contact, or Account.
Salesforce Admin Answer:
You still have to convert the Lead, but after that, you can use a Flow or code to then create the custom object.
ChatGPT Answer:
My Thoughts on the ChatGPT Answer:
Again, it’s telling us to do something that’s not even possible! And where is it even getting this stuff? It’s not like there’s a lack of good Salesforce content on the internet.
Summary
Some of you more experienced admins might argue that I set up ChatGPT to fail here – that I asked these specific questions intentionally knowing it would probably get them wrong. Believe it or not, these three questions are real, and I’ve been asked all three in the last 30 or so days.
Here’s why I chose all three:
- Question 1: Users sometimes assume that if they can’t do something, you must have to be a Salesforce Admin to do it. Based on this assumption, they request people to be made admins, or make sure that any new hires are admins. This happens all the time and it’s the number one thing I have to correct in new orgs. I asked this question because I wanted to see if ChatGPT would be able to advise a best practice (i.e. not making everyone an admin.)
- Question 2: People love picklists, but some people (I’m looking at you, Sales!) also want open text. This question came about because someone wanted to create a Competitor list, but didn’t want to have to update the picklist every time a new competitor popped up. I was actually expecting ChatGPT to get this one right!
- Question 3: This is the most recent question I got, and to be fair, it came up during a brainstorming session, so it wasn’t what you’d call a real ‘request’. I wasn’t sure what ChatGPT would come up with on this one, but I was definitely interested.
So where does this leave us? ChatGPT was not able to give a good, comprehensive, or even accurate answer to any of these three questions. In fact, if a new admin or user was asking these questions and trying to follow the directions, they’d probably be extremely confused and would have wasted a lot of time looking for things that don’t exist! With all this in mind, I am resolved in my decision that no, ChatGPT will not replace a human Salesforce Admin any time soon.
However, there are areas where admins can take advantage of ChatGPT… Writing content is a big one. If an admin needs to write a lot of training content, this might be a good option to lighten some of that load. When asked a question like “How do I create an Opportunity in Salesforce?” ChatGPT delivered, and even included a clause noting that the steps may vary based on your Salesforce edition and setup.
With all this in mind, I feel secure in saying that ChatGPT is not going to replace humans any time soon – so rest easy, Salesforce Admins! If you’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT and found any Salesforce Admin tasks that the tool really excels at, please let me know in the comments below!
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