"Don't become Salesforce's prisoner". A major french automotive CEO breaks silence

How does Salesforce make money? By locking in its customers, its installed customer base? By selling 18$ branded toddler socks? A major automotive executive speaks out. What can AI agents actually do, who should you build them with, and who should deploy them?

Some answers from En-Contact, an independent magazine covering CRM, call centers, and customer experience.

Salesforce held its Agentforce World Tour Paris 2026 last week in Paris. Registration was supposedly free. For years, Salesforce has embedded itself deep inside companies — infiltrating their core operations. At what cost? And are the much-hyped AI Agents actually operational — and profitable — at Salesforce and elsewhere?

"Leaders tempted by Agentforce, beware. Don't become Salesforce's prisoner."

A major french automotive CEO breaks silence. A few months ago, Salesforce's CEO in France, Emilie Sidiqian, celebrated strong Q3 results. After her post, one of her French clients responded publicly on a social network:

"Congratulations on these results — predictable, given the pressure you put on your installed customer base. As your longest-standing automotive client in France (12 years of loyalty), I need to temper some of this enthusiasm around the 'agentic' company. I made the mistake of building too deeply on your platform. The result: total lock-in, with an imposed 10%-plus annual price increase. The kicker? Even when we reduce the number of users, Salesforce raises unit prices to compensate. The message is clear: no matter what we do, the bill goes up. This is a tax on technical dependency, not a partnership. Leaders tempted by Agentforce, be careful: building your agents inside Salesforce means transferring value to them. Agentic AI demands trustworthy partners — a quality Salesforce has lost by exploiting the captivity of its long-standing clients. Don't become their prisoner."

The CEO behind those words is Anthony Hess, who runs a sizeable SME with €1 billion in revenue operating in a sector undergoing rapid transformation: mobility and automotive retail. He owns dealerships and sells remotely. He's a graduate of École Polytechnique. Ahead of the curve, he and his team equipped their call center and sales operation with a speech analytics tool — a genuine commitment to listening to the voice of customers and prospects, and to driving performance. He did it by choosing a specialized French software company, Callity, which can be connected via API to 80% of CCaaS platforms currently in use — except for those that prefer to keep their clients locked in. Do those exist? Apparently so.

We tried to reach Emilie Sidiqian, Salesforce's Managing Director in France

We reached out after this executive's public statement, to ask for her perspective — which, it turns out, is far from isolated. We've frequently heard the same frustrations from Salesforce customers and CCaaS platform clients who find themselves trapped. Is Marc Benioff their puppet master?
Did anyone get back to us? No. 
The day before the Agentforce World Tour Paris 2026, we tried to register. At the very end of the registration process — advertised as free — we were asked to pay a €60 registration fee to attend. What exactly does "free" mean at Salesforce?

"What surprised me most was that no one at Salesforce called me after my post — not the sales team, not senior management," says Anthony Hess.

Salesforce's stock has dropped 37% since the start of the year. The CCaaS space is being turned upside down

Should companies keep loading up on SaaS tools whose licensing costs climb every year? Should we remain prisoners of vendors like Genesys, Odigo, Silae? The answer is more like: choose the right partner, don't hesitate to ask straightforward questions, and test before you commit.

AI Agents can help drive revenue

At Retif, a subsidiary of Raja — a French mid-market group with over €1.7 billion in European revenue — the CEO deployed a conversational AI agent in just two months, to re-engage dormant customers. The company has 2 million contacts on file and 450,000 active customers annually. Using an AI agent built by Volubile.ai, Retif managed to bring customers back into stores and close sales remotely — early in the morning, late at night, when its call center is closed. 120,000 outbound calls were made; 31% were answered. €1.2 million in incremental new business was generated.

In France, more than twenty companies offer conversational AI agents

En-Contact has independently benchmarked all of them. Volubile.ai leads the pack, working with Homair (Europe's leading camping operator), Le Figaro, major luxury and telecom players, and dental practices. Yampa.ai is another ambitious player, as is Illuin Technology, which positions itself more as a conversational AI orchestrator. A handful of BPO players are starting to bring these tools in-house after mistakenly viewing them as competitors. Comete.ai is one of the most experienced integrators in deploying AI agents, thanks to a smart, agnostic approach.

Note: Silae is a software publisher widely used by accounting firms, particularly for payroll processing. Last year, four years after being acquired by Silver Lake, Silae raised its prices by 280%. The company initially pushed the increase through by force, then partially walked it back after the french order of certified public accountant pushed back — an order that had itself failed to develop its own alternative solution.

On June 25th in Paris: the third edition of the New Biz Forum

Aside from rotisserie chicken (sometimes rotten… Thank you Master Poulet) and Swatch watches co-branded with Audemars Piguet, what actually works when it comes to customer acquisition? For real?

Business conditions are far from booming across many sectors. But some companies are pulling ahead — either because their market is favorable, or because they're adapting faster to the new landscape: as of August 11th, outbound calling will be banned unless the prospect has given explicit opt-in consent. So how do you sell by phone and prospect effectively?

Some stores are still packed. Waiting lines are no longer a deterrent — just look at Polène, Sezane at Le Bon Marché, or Master Poulet.

AI agents can reactivate dormant prospect and customer databases. We'll be talking through all of this with practitioners and concrete examples.

June 25th, Paris — 3rd edition of the New Biz Forum.
The New Biz Forum is the only professional event in France dedicated to new customer acquisition, in retail, call centers, and with AI agents. It is organized in Paris by En-Contact magazine.

To join us, choose between three options :
- BtoC brand: 60 euros TTC.
- En-Contact' subscriber : 120 euros TTC.
- En-Contact' non subscriber : 280 euros TTC.

Discover the event here.

Cover photo, photomontage of Emilie Sidiqian, a few days before the end of the quarter, when the numbers need to come in. In telemarketing lingo, a boiler room is where sales reps make cold calls.

Manuel Jacquinet