A Swedish company that replaced humans with AI in marketing and customer service jobs has realised that it made a mistake. Financial tech startup Klarna automated them after partnering with OpenAI. In 2023, it stopped hiring humans altogether after cutting down its marketing contracts. The next year, it replaced the customer service team with AI agents.
But, it is now taking a U-turn as the decision to get rid of humans in customer care positions has backfired. Klarna is planning a big recruitment drive and will hire people to work remotely and deal with customers, Futurism reported.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the Swedish fintech’s CEO, admitted that having AI agents talking to real people who are already angry about something was a bad idea.
Klarna CEO admits AI reps no match for humans
“From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will always be a human if you want,” he said.
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Only five months back, he told Bloomberg that “AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do.” At this time, Klarna had already reduced its workforce by 22 per cent. After pausing new recruitments, the company stated that it had saved $10 million on marketing costs. Jobs such as translation, art production, and data analysis were transferred to generative AI. It claimed that automated customer service agents were equal to having “700 full-time agents.”
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Cost played a major role in Klarna deciding to replace humans with an automated customer care service. However, Siemiatkowski admitted that they suffered problems with quality.
Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, “Cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organising this, what you end up having is lower quality.”
A January 2024 survey of 1,400 business executives showed that a majority weren’t happy with “their organisation’s progress on AI and GenAI so far”, and that AI lacked talent and skills. A recent survey in the UK found that 55 per cent of businessmen who replaced humans with AI regret their decision.
