“Customers want outcomes, not AI features.” This is the first line of Rohan Kumar’s letter to the Salesforce ecosystem, two months after he took on the position of Salesforce President. Now acting as both Salesforce President and the company’s Chief Platform and Engineering Officer, he has been candid about what he has learned from both Salesforce professionals and customers, and for many in the community, this will feel like a breath of fresh air.
In an era as all-encompassing as the artificial intelligence era we are currently living through, understanding what is wanted from you as a company is key. Could this understanding from Kumar signal that the CRM giant is finally steering itself in the right direction?
Salesforce’s ‘Full-Steam-Ahead’ AI Strategy
If you’ve been in the Salesforce ecosystem for at least the last two to three years, then you’ll know how zealous the company’s push toward AI has been. The release of Agentforce – Salesforce’s proprietary AI product – acted as the catalyst for this movement. It brought forward over a decade of research and development within the AI space in the form of a platform that combined the best of both worlds: intelligent automation and existing, connected CRM data.
It wasn’t the only software company to make this move into AI. All around Salesforce, nearly every tech company you could find rerouted their product roadmaps to center around AI, desperate to tap into the illustrious success that had come with the release of ChatGPT. Effectively, it was encouraging (or forcing) every tech company to become an “AI-first” company.
Since then, analysts, critics, Wall Street, and the media have closely followed and critiqued Salesforce’s AI direction and motives, questioning the success of existing products and theorizing about what is coming next versus what needs to come next.
Agentforce’s adoption numbers have been scrutinized since the very beginning, and other aspects of Salesforce’s AI strategy have continuously been under the spotlight. Although Salesforce maintains its Agentforce adoption numbers are strong, customer satisfaction with the product has continued to remain wobbly, with an overall lack of real-world use cases and confusion over pricing.
For its very vocal community, Agentforce and AI have certainly given the CRM giant a new lease of life, but it has come at a cost. Concerns that the platform’s core functionality has simply been forgotten about and claims that Salesforce is only thinking about its AI customers and disregarding everything else have been circling for quite some time. Just last Dreamforce, Salesforce Co-Founder Parker Harris admitted that the company had indeed “lost its way” after the community told them that “Agentforce isn’t everything.”
That’s why I call Salesforce’s AI push its “full-steam-ahead strategy”. Up to this point, the CRM giant has pushed forward in pursuit of AI greatness and ranking in the AI race, seemingly at whatever cost, material or otherwise. There is no denying that the AI race is a ruthless one, but the company’s perceived disregard for taking on certain feedback has not gone unnoticed.
The Case of Headless 360
That being said, not all customer feedback has gone unnoticed. Take the release of Headless 360 – Salesforce’s AI architecture layer that makes “everything on Salesforce” an API, MCP tool, or CLI command usable by agents. Salesforce recognized that its customers wanted choice when it came to the tools, models, and platforms they use for building agents, and they endeavoured to make it as simple as possible.
It is still early days; Headless 360 has only been live since April this year. A lot of the Salesforce community is still fairly confused as to what Headless 360 actually does. But if the CRM giant continues down this path, especially under the aspirations of a new Salesforce President, Rohan Kumar.
More AI Features Isn’t The Answer
Having only joined Salesforce in June, it is safe to say that Kumar has not had long to get stuck in or work out where the company’s user base and customers stand with it. However, in his latest public letter on LinkedIn, he has indicated that Salesforce could be heading towards the future its community has been asking for.
“If there is one message I’ve heard consistently in conversations with customers around the world, it is this: they aren’t looking for more AI for the sake of AI,” he wrote. “They are trying to transform their businesses.”
He explains that the most sought-after opportunity through AI is efficiency, but that he is more interested in growth, and specifically growth with significant outcomes.
“We need to organize around the outcomes our customers are trying to achieve, not around individual AI features or existing product boundaries,” he wrote.
“Ultimately, we should measure the success of AI not by how many AI features we ship, but by the usage, adoption, customer satisfaction and, most importantly, the business outcomes our customers achieve.”
Has Salesforce Finally Got It?
If Kumar’s words are anything to go by, this could indicate that Salesforce finally understands the direction in which it needs to pursue the AI race going forward.
Andrew Russo, a vocal member of the Salesforce community, appeared to share these sentiments, writing on LinkedIn: “As a customer, I can say your first point is spot on 1000%. Exactly what we have been asking for.”
Vikash Soni, the CTO and Co-Founder of DianApps, also shared his support, writing: “As someone who works closely with Salesforce, this transition is huge.”
However, it is important to remember that Kumar is only one person. He will not be the only one making decisions on Salesforce’s AI direction, and he will likely come across some pushback at one stage or another. Salesforce may not have activist investors anymore, but the company will still be looking to see how to maximize growth and keep profits high.
Dreamforce will be the next big indicator of Salesforce’s journey forward with AI, so we will likely know more then.
Final Thoughts
As time goes on, Salesforce seems to increasingly realize the importance of connecting with their customers in terms of their needs and wants, especially when it comes to AI. When Agentforce was first introduced, Salesforce had one idea of what their customers wanted, but as the product has matured and the market has developed, they have responded to customer feedback and now are in a much better position to tackle its own AI future.
Do you think that we will see the CRM giant’s direction change for the better? Let us know in the comments.
