After praising the potential of the artificial intelligence To perform all kinds of tasks, even replacing humans in certain jobs, the CEO of Klarnathe “Buy now, pay later” platform, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, intends to reverse in its plan to implement AI attendees for customer service.
Instead, as reported Bloomberghas promoted a process of selecting Human talent With the intention of offering that customers always have the option of talking to a real person. In this sense, the company is testing a new approach, based “In a configuration similar to that of Uber“, so that professionals can connect and work remotely.
Klarna’s intention would be to reverse the human agents that Klarna is currently outsourcing for staff. According to the aforementioned media, the pilot project has already begun with a small number of agents of customer service, But ambition is to capture candidates as rural students or populations.
“It is essential to make clear the client that there will always be a person available”
“We also know that there are many Klarna users who feel great enthusiasm for our company and enjoy working with us“said Siemiatkowski.”From the perspective of the brand, from the company’s perspective, I think it is essential to make clear the client that there will always be an available person if you want”
The new plan has been launched after the company suspended human talent hiring During the past year, with the intention of focusing on the investment and development of artificial intelligence capacities. As Bundle collects, the workforce was reduced by 22% in that period, to 3,500 workers. Siestikowski even asked Klarna employees to resort to AI to cover the work of vacancies.
In February 2024, the company said that the AI could carry out the work of 700 customer service agents and that it had managed 75% of the company’s chats, that is, approximately 2.3 million conversations, within one month since its launch. Chatbot managed consultations on topics such as reimbursements, returns and payments in more than 35 languages.
In addition, the company was also applying artificial intelligence solutions to the field of marketing and advertising. In May of last year Klarna shared that artificial intelligence was helped to reduce external agencies and marketing suppliers, And he pointed out that thanks to technology there were 25%savings. Specifically, said Hover cut 4 million dollars of expenses in external translation services, production and social media agencies.
“AI is helping us to be more agile, faster and more receptive to what matters to our clients, which leads us to a much better experience“said David Sandström, how of Klarna, in a statement.”And, in fact, we are promoting more marketing activities and at the same time we save tens of millions of dollars a year“
But the strategy, at least in the field of customer service, as the CEO of the Klarna has transferred, has not been adequate. “As, unfortunately, the cost seems to have been an evaluation factor too predominant to organizing this, the final result is a lower quality“He said, according to Boomberg. “Really investing in the quality of human care is the future for us“
However, Klarna maintains the enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, in which he will continue to bet on Improve the efficiency of the activity. In this regard, the company has plans to present this year a first version of a digital financial assistant who could perform certain tasks automatically for users.
Consequently, it can be expected that the company’s workforce will continue to descend as technology improves. However, Siestkowski believes that this will not happen immediately, but provides that it takes place from the next twelve months.
In addition, Klarna has postponed her plans for IPO In New York at the end of April, but has postponed the process until after the summer, according to the Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri. The medium refers to market volatility, derived from US tariff policy.
