Customer relationship management technology provider Salesforce has around 76,000 employees globally, with teams based across major hubs including San Francisco, London, Tokyo and Sydney. Its workforce covers engineering and product development through to sales, marketing and customer support.
As well as providing artifical intelligence (AI) solutions to its customers, it uses its AI tools and technologies within its own operations. Andy Valenzuela, executive vice president at Salesforce, explains: “We call ourselves customer zero. Our AI helps us transform our own business, including our employee benefits strategy.”
It supports its employee benefits strategy in a variety of different ways. These include helping it to streamline benefits administration and giving it more insight into how employees engage with their benefits, allowing it to refine what it offers.
Its AI technology also helps it provide more targeted benefits support to its global workforce. “Using Agentforce, our agentic AI solution, we deploy an employee agent,” explains Valenzuela. ”This helps employees navigate their benefit options, getting the answers to common benefits questions directly in Slack, and providing reminders about their choices and any relevant dates.”
The accuracy of its AI is closely monitored to ensure employees are receiving the right benefits information. So far, the employee agent has answered more than 8,000 benefits-related queries, with a success rate of 99.5%.
AI is also used across Salesforce’s employee wellbeing support. Through this, employees are provided with access to relevant tools and content, personalised coaching, and nudges to help them achieve their goals, whether that is topping up their savings or taking a break.
Being able to use AI to shape its employee benefits strategy has significant advantages, according to Valenzuela. “By using AI and agents to deliver support and streamline administration, we’re freeing up our benefits specialists to focus on more complex, personalised guidance. This approach gives us a competitive edge, allowing us to attract and retain top talent,” he adds.
