The debate around vendor consolidation in CX isn’t new, but Salesforce’s push into the contact center with Agentforce has given it fresh urgency.
For Baker Johnson, Chief Business Officer at UJET, the announcement confirms something the industry has long struggled to admit: the fragmentation between systems of record and systems of engagement is a real problem. Where he parts ways with Salesforce is on the solution.
Johnson’s argument is rooted in what he calls the “integration trap.” Enterprises spent the better part of a decade buying tools that promised seamless connectivity, only to find their agents juggling four to ten systems at once and their IT teams buried in administrative debt.
The result is vendor lock-in so deep that switching costs have effectively become a management strategy:
“We tried to migrate our CRM for three years, but we had something like 30 different tools and operational processes across departments that were all integrated in there. It made the switching costs so high that we constantly just said, okay, we’ll pay the increase this year.”
The numbers back that frustration up. Johnson points out that roughly 70% of Salesforce’s new revenue growth last year came from price increases rather than net new sales, a figure he sees as evidence that organizations aren’t choosing the platform so much as they’re stuck with it.
On the AI question, Johnson is cautiously optimistic. He sees early signs that the industry is grounding its expectations in data strategy and process reality, rather than chasing the next headline.
His advice to anyone currently weighing an all-in-one approach: ignore the existing stack entirely.
“Start with a clean sheet of paper. Design for today’s reality and then figure out what the right path is for you to get there.”
It’s a straightforward challenge to conventional procurement thinking, and one that’s worth sitting with before the next renewal lands.
