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I lead organizations that help customers successfully adopt transformational technologies…
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Bernard Slowey shared thisThis will make you think twice: when it comes to AI-powered systems and workflows, a "frictionless" experience shouldn't be the goal. MIT researcher Dr. Renée Richardson Gosline argues that friction can actually be a good thing — it creates deliberate pauses that keep humans in the loop, reducing errors and driving better outcomes. I really enjoyed our discussion on a panel at Dreamforce on how to optimize human-agent working relationships. Watch Dr. Gosline's full presentation at the link below. #Dreamforce #Agentforce #HumanInTheLoop
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Bernard Slowey shared thisI can't stop reflecting on last week. My 5th Dreamforce, and without doubt my favorite! It felt different this year. Salesforce unveiled AIforce, bringing the full power of the platform into Claude, Slack, and Agentforce Coworker. Marc had Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Jensen Huang all there. So much for the SaaS apocalypse! Here's some of my highlights from my week: - I was part of the Salesforce on Salesforce keynote, Scaling the Agentic Enterprise, on Tuesday alongside Joe Inzerillo, Andy White, Adam Johnson, Sabastian Niles, and Nathalie Scardino. Packed room. I talked about a problem every service leader knows: you can't give every customer a white-glove experience once you're at scale. Agentic AI is the first thing that's changed what we can do about it. Link in the comments for the session. - Wednesday, I facilitated A New Lesson in Leadership at the Sales & Service Lounge, on leading human and agent blended teams with Dr. Renée Richardson Gosline from MIT, Archana Agarwal from Fin, and Chitra Sridhar from Cencora. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Renee's research on how people perceive AI's value, and getting to dig into it live with her on stage is one of my favorite moments of the year. - Jim Roth and I took the Executive Summit stage on Thursday to share what we've learned from 5 million conversations with our Help Agent:, now live across Voice and inside the Salesforce platform. Being the support act for Reese Witherspoon was definitely a career highlight 😂 - Truth to the Core is always one of my favorite hours of the week. Hearing straight from our community what matters to them, and I even manged to get a selfie with Andrew Russo! - My team made so much happen. They ran 68 activations at Dreamforce! Very thankful! #Dreamforce #DF26 #AgenticEnterprise Salesforce
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Bernard Slowey shared thisNot every day you end up on the same agenda as Reese Witherspoon, Sam Altman, Marc and other amazing speakers!! Today was one of those days. Jim Roth and I talked about what we learned from 5 million AI conversations, in the room at Dreamforce's Executive Summit. Big day for Dreamforce. Bigger day for my LinkedIn bragging rights 😂 #dreamforce
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Bernard Slowey shared thisWe're back for another year, to help you learn about how Salesforce is scaling itself with agentic AI, not in theory, but in practice. At Dreamforce this year, we're opening up exactly that in our Salesforce on Salesforce keynote: Scaling the Agentic Enterprise. I'll be talking about a problem every service leader knows — you can't give every customer the same white-glove experience once you're at scale. I've lived that at Microsoft, GitHub, and now here. What's changed is what agentic AI now lets us do about it! I will be joining Joseph Inzerillo, Andy White, Adam Johnson, Sabastian V. Niles and Nathalie Scardino. Hope to see you there. #DF26 #AgenticEnterprise #SalesforceOnSalesforce
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Bernard Slowey reacted on thisBernard Slowey reacted on thisAttending Dreamforce? Come meet the team behind Help Agent, our implementation of Agentforce that is now live across 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE, help.salesforce.com, our Slack and Informatica Help Portals, and now rolling out inside of the Salesforce platform itself. Learn from our two year journey, and hear directly from the team that built it. See you there!
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Bernard Slowey shared thisEvery company has a 1-800 number. For years, calling one meant knowing something before you even dialed: what department can answer my question? Guess wrong, and you're in a transfer loop, explaining yourself all over again to someone new. Great news, our customers don't have to experience any guesswork moving forward. Our Help Agent, powered by Agentforce Voice, listens to what someone actually needs and takes it from there, no menu, no department to pick, no wrong door. A caller doesn't have to sort themselves into a category before they even speak. They just start talking, and if what they need shifts partway through, the agent shifts with them. When a Support Engineer steps in, they already have the full conversation in hand, so the customer never repeats themselves. This isn't about a faster menu. It's about getting to the right help, faster, period. It's live today, in North America, in English, for every customer who calls 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. 📹 See it in action below! https://lnkd.in/ekj8jPrX #Agentforce #CustomerSuccess #CustomerService #AIAgents #SalesforceReimagine the Call with Help Agent powered by Agentforce VoiceReimagine the Call with Help Agent powered by Agentforce Voice
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Bernard Slowey shared thisWe've all seen what a great LLM can do. It writes, reasons, holds a conversation better than most humans on a bad day! That was never the question. Sonnenfeld, Tian and Henriques asked a sharper question in CNBC this week: what happens once every company can license the same brilliant models. Frontier LLMs already leapfrog each other every few months, days? The gap between best and good enough keeps shrinking toward zero. Intelligence is getting cheap and interchangeable, so value is shifting to whatever intelligence can't run without: trusted, proprietary data, the real record of what happened with a customer, case by case, promise by promise. Salesforce sits on some of the richest, most structured customer data on the planet: 104 trillion records ingested last quarter, up 355% year over year. Pair that data with a frontier model like Claude and you get an agent that knows the customer, not one that only sounds smart. The earnings numbers point to one lesson: once every company can license the same frontier model, data does the differentiating. That's the logic behind #Claudeforce. Anthropic bulids the model. Salesforce supplies the data. That pairing, not the next model release, is what decides who wins the next decade of enterprise AI. https://lnkd.in/eQUaG8CKOp-ed: Salesforce just revealed the next battleground in AI — and it's not the modelsOp-ed: Salesforce just revealed the next battleground in AI — and it's not the models
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Bernard Slowey shared thisWhen we built our Help Agent at Salesforce, accuracy was the first thing we focused on. That part of the job doesn't end. Improving resolution rate stays priority one. But what we learned is accuracy alone doesn't earn trust. Customers judge an agent by how it talks to them, especially when they're frustrated. We had to teach ours to spot those moments, respond with the right tone, and know when to hand off to a human. That's the "Head and a Heart" idea: get the answer right, and get the delivery right too. Read what we learned as Customer Zero here: sforce.co/4xZxMZP That's one section of the full playbook, Become an Agentic Enterprise, a great resource if you're on that journey yourself, built from lessons across teams at Salesforce, not just mine. #MultiAgentAI #AgenticAI #CustomerExperience #CustomerService
Bernard Slowey commented on a post
10h
huge congrats Jasmine Serano , so well deserved 👏
Bernard Slowey replied to a comment
2d
Renée Richardson Gosline , keep up the amazing work! Your research and the way you bring it to life are truly second to none.
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Bernard Slowey reacted on thisBernard Slowey reacted on this15x15…As I approach my 15 year anniversary, sharing some things that have helped me over the years, in hopes some might be helpful to others: 1. ✍️ Write down your goals. Write or listen to them daily to really reprogram 2. 📣 Tell people about your life goals. Scary, but builds real accountability partners around you. And think BIGGER 3. 👀 Visualise your goals. Find mentors to give real feedback, not glossy reactions. People that have been there, done that 4. 🗓️ Upgrade goals to decisions with a date on your calendar. Then get to work every day. Daily habits above all. 18 mins per day for 1 year gets you in top 5% globally 5. 🦸Bet on people before they are ready. They won’t forget you did that. And watch what happens! Be fair on how you do it. Proud that 50% of our LT are female 6. 👷♀️Build the environment of success around your people. Help. Teach. Show. Do it yourself 7. Be willing to do the grunt work. You’re not above it. Otherwise no one else will and it will permeate the whole culture 8. 🤓if you want outcomes, Focus. Focus. Focus. Noise and busyness create no value. Find and work the signal 9. 📶 if you don’t sort bad behaviour, you’re enabling, supporting and possibly promoting it. The remaining 95% deserve better 10. 🏆 if you want sr leadership, inspire and manage the team around you. Not just up, not just down. Around. That’s your 1st team. No one cares about org charts. Just be human and LIFT 11.⏳spend your time customer facing no matter what. Break your calendar. Stop the internal meetings. Use internal meetings to upgrade what you deliver externally. Get in the turf with customers partners and teams. Create the world’s most successful customers and move the world to help them 12. 🏃succession plan starts day 1. You’re a steward of the business - it’s not your business (unless you own the business). So act like it. Make yourself completely replaceable. How you leave a role is as important as how did in the role. It’s a terrifyingly large responsibility. So act like it. 13. ☮️ avoid politics wherever you can. If you can’t influence directly and openly, work harder 14. 💓give back. Super proud our operating unit is #1 in the company for volunteering. We take it serious. Give time. Raise funds. Care. It means so much to the community and builds a service culture you can’t break 15. 🤝 Help, serve, care. Keep messaging simple and consistent. Do all the right inputs regardless of the scoreboard. The scoreboard will catch up to great daily actions and authentic leaders doing the hard yards every day 16.🚦And as I start my 16th year this quarter, adding one that always seems to be missing. Failure and Misses is where nearly all the learning is. Don’t run from it. In QBRs, ignore the green and the hi-fives and focus on the red and swarm and solve problems as a team. Mistakes are ok if we learn from them and solve them. Solving problems creates unity. Thats where the magic happens And focus on Energy, Health, Rest, Balance, Reflection. Onward 🚀
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Bernard Slowey reacted on thisBernard Slowey reacted on thisI'm heading to Pioneer next week - the summit for CX leaders operating at the absolute frontier of whats possible with AI! I cant wait to hear how some of the sharpest CX minds out there — from Anthropic, Clay, Box, AppFolio, Gamma, Nuuly, Teachable, and (of course!) Salesforce — are reimagining customer experience with AI. Especially excited to see my colleague Emily Winslow take the stage. Its always a highlight when she's speaking! And Fin has got some major product announcements coming too, so don't miss it. Cant make it to SF? You can stream it online! Head to pioneer.fin.ai to register. #Service #CustomerService #CustomerExperience #CX
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Bernard Slowey reacted on thisBernard Slowey reacted on thisI am thrilled to share the news that I am joining SAS as EVP and Chief Sales Officer. What drew me to SAS is simple: trust. AI is caught in a cycle of rapid acceleration and constant reinvention. As AI moves deeper into how organizations operate, customers need more than access to the next great model. They need confidence in the data, decisions, and outcomes behind it. SAS has built that confidence over five decades by innovating alongside customers and helping them put their most important data to work. I’m excited to help build on that foundation. I am so very grateful for my time at Google and the exceptional colleagues, customers, and partners I had the privilege to work with. I am looking forward to seeing the incredible impact Google will continue to have across the ecosystem.
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Bernard Slowey reacted on thisBernard Slowey reacted on thisI got a sneak peek at Paul Adams product keynote for Pioneer this week, and all I can say is it's not one to miss 🤩 Having seen how much work has gone into what's being announced, I'm genuinely excited to see it land with our customers and the market Pioneer is on Wednesday 7 October in San Francisco. If you can’t make it in person it's free to join online. You'll hear from leaders at Fin, Anthropic, Clay, Gamma, Teachable, AppFolio and Nuuly on where AI in customer experience is actually heading and what real AI transformation looks like. Link to register in the comments.
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Bernard Slowey liked thisIt was a pleasure speaking with Vida Vidyangi Patil at Dreamforce a few weeks ago about the work of Salesforce Futures and the forces we see shaping the emerging Agentic Enterprise. Let us know how we did - and what we missed - in the comments!Bernard Slowey liked this#AgenticEnterprise New on Ctrl Alt Podcast with Vida Patil - Michael Costigan, VP of Salesforce Futures joins us at Dreamforce #DF2026. " The age of personal assistants is here! Meta's Muse, OpenAI's Dots and there's Instinct on Whatsapp. We discuss #SlackForce #AgentForce and a lot more. "The core enterprise challenge isn't model horsepower its turning fast-moving AI capability into trusted, organization-wide value without drowning in uncertainty around models, data, regulation, and sovereignty." "Data sovereignty comes with real trade-offs because global access is what ultimately lets innovation spread quickly., he says" As AI capability accelerates, every board is demanding an agent strategy. But moving from standalone copilots to trusted, organization-wide agentic workflows requires far more than just buying new tools. In this episode on Architecting the Agentic Enterprise, we sit down with Mick Costigan, VP of Salesforce Futures (and former World Economic Forum AI Policy Fellow amp; Global Business Network LLC (GlobNet) strategist), to unpack what’s actually happening behind the scenes. Here is what VCs, CxOs, and Operators need to hear right now: 🔹 Computing Moves in Jumps, Not Straight Lines 📈History shows platform shifts follow a punctuated equilibrium. Mick shares why today’s AI wave feels different—and where traditional tech analogies completely break down. 🔹 Turning Fast Capability into Trusted Value 🛡️The biggest hurdle isn’t model horsepower it’s turning raw capability into trusted, scalable value across data, regulation, and sovereignty trade-offs. 🔹 Build vs. Buy in 2028 🔮Will enterprise agents be custom-built or bought off the shelf? Plus, the one scenario CIOs with flat budgets should plan for that almost everyone is ignoring. 🔹 Weak Signals to Executive Action 🎯How foresight teams separate noise from real trends—and turn weak signals into strategies top executives will actually execute on.If you are deploying capital, building agentic infrastructure, or leading an enterprise AI transformation, this conversation has many takes for you.🎧 Listen to the full episode now: Link in comments below 👇 Thank you for making this happen! Isabella (Bella) Luppino Claire Cronin Kishore Will Box Method Communications Julianna Young #AIAgents #EnterpriseAI #AgenticEnterprise #Salesforce #VentureCapital #Leadership #TechStrategy #FutureOfWork Slack
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Bernard Slowey liked thisBernard Slowey liked thisHere's a stat that sticks: technology is only 30% of becoming an Agentic Enterprise. The other 70% is redesigning how the company works and getting people ready to work differently alongside agents. We got into this and more at Dreamforce for a new episode of Executive Conversations. One thing we agreed on: you can't drop agents into a broken process and expect a good outcome. Skip the redesign and you've just automated the dysfunction. Then there's the money conversation. How do you know an agent is creating value, not just burning tokens? And how do you tell a strategic bet from FOMO dressed up as strategy? 👀 Needless to say, we covered a lot in 30 minutes. New episode dropping soon. Catch up on Executive Conversations here 👉 https://sforce.co/4gz0ESQ 📸 Salesforce leaders Robin Washington, President and Chief Operating and Financial Officer, and Leandro Perez, SVP and CMO, ANZ.
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Bernard Slowey reacted on thisBernard Slowey reacted on thisToday, Salesforce is acquiring Listen Labs. Three years ago, Alfred and Florian were building their first demo in Sequoia Capital’s coworking space. They worked there so late, so often, that anyone who got locked out at night knew to call one of them (like Charlie Curnin...who moonlighted as their star engineering recruiter). Before Listen, Alfred and Florian built a consumer app called BeFake that went viral and got 20,000 users overnight. It also had a churn problem. To understand why people were leaving, they built an AI that could interview their users for them...a problem Bryan Schreier knew immensely well for years. That tool became the company. They saw that most product decisions get made without customer input, because talking to customers is slow and expensive. A meaningful market research study could take a year. Listen Labs made research continuous, with AI running the interviews and synthesizing the answers, so a company could hear from its customers every week. Sequoia had the privilege of leading their seed round in 2023, before they even had a demo, because Bryan, Charlie, Jess and our whole team we believed in the two of them. A great idea only gets you so far. Alfred and Florian are exceptional builders, and they attracted a team just as strong. That team did the hard work of turning an idea into a product that marketers love. We saw their craftsmanship up close because Sequoia was one of Listen's first customers. The product spread through our firm on its own, and we used it for everything from peer feedback to diligence on potential partnerships. By the time we led their Series A, we had looked at every similar product on the market, and Listen was still the clear standout. About a year after launch, they were serving 20% of the Fortune 500. Alfred likes to say that as AI makes building easier, the hard part becomes knowing what to build. Listen helps companies answer that by talking to their customers, and with Salesforce, every company can do the same. Congratulations and thank you to my amazing friends Alfred, Florian and the entire Listen Labs team, and to Marc Benioff and the Salesforce team. This is the start of something special.
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Circle of Excellence - Platinum Club
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The exclusive Platinum Club is Microsoft's premier award program recognizing and rewarding individuals who consistently perform at the highest level and directly contribute to our success. Recipients are influential leaders that have surpassed expectations by going above and beyond. Earning the prestigious Platinum Club Award is an honor that only a few of our finest employees ever achieve.
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Ivan L.
When it comes to business model innovation, it’s not about chasing shiny new ideas. It’s about how they fit - with operational rigor, customer value, and ecosystem strength - that drives long-term success. 🔹 Research of nearly 300 companies across two tech eras reveals: Novelty alone won't guarantee top performance. The magic is in the system design, not just the spark. 🔹 Spotify, for example, revolutionized music streaming through novelty, yes, but also balanced that with efficiency and customer lock-in to dominate. 🔹 In 2025, AI is not just a tool but a strategic lever for business model innovation. According to IBM, 85% of executives expect AI to enable new business models this year, while 44% plan to use AI specifically to drive innovation. Key principles for leaders considering business model innovation now: 1. Pair novelty with operational discipline — don’t sacrifice efficiency for the new. 2. Design to lock in customers by delivering ongoing value. 3. Build complementary partnerships to amplify reach and capabilities. 4. Tailor innovations to your company’s unique context — size, strategy, industry trends. 5. Leverage AI and emerging tech thoughtfully, to transform value creation and capture. The best innovators don’t just do new. They engineer balanced, adaptable systems designed to win in complex markets.
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