How Salesforce Cut Customer Attrition From 20% to 8% ft. Michael Marguglio

Most companies treat renewals as a sales function. The real shift is treating retention as a job for the whole company.

In this episode of the [Un]Churned Podcast, Josh Schachter sits down with Mike Marguglio, EVP of Global Renewals at Salesforce, to unpack how his team manages almost 400,000 renewals a year, how Salesforce brought attrition from over 20% to about 8%, and what AI agents are actually doing in renewals today.

Mike shares how a renewals agent turned hours of contract research into an executive view, what hasn’t worked with AI, and how the shift from licenses to consumption is changing the renewal playbook.

They also dive into: - How the attrition council aligns senior leaders across the company on retention - Why “a dollar of existing business is just as important as a dollar new business” - How a renewals agent, Ask Renewals, and a long-tail agent are changing the job - What hasn’t worked with AI: incomplete summaries, distrust, and low adoption - How pricing is shifting from licenses to consumption and human-plus-agent models - Why Mike wants renewal to be “a non-event”

If you’re leading renewals, building a customer success team, or trying to figure out how AI agents fit into retention, this episode shows how Salesforce runs renewals at scale.

Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.

Chapters 00:00 – Intro & Salesforce Renewals at Scale 01:36 – Why 400,000 Renewals Is So Complex 05:03 – The Attrition Council: From Over 20% to About 8% 09:42 – What the Renewals Team Is Doing With AI 17:09 – What AI Caught That Humans Missed 20:28 – How Pricing Changes the Renewal Playbook 22:06 – What Hasn’t Worked With AI 26:05 – AI Adoption and the One-Year Forecast 29:00 – Automating the Long Tail 35:27 – Advice for People Starting Out in Renewals

Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com

Where to Find the Guest: Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-marguglio-209895/

Where to Find the Host: Josh’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/ Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com