Klarna said this week that an artificial intelligence chatbot is doing work equivalent to hundreds of people, drawing fresh attention to the impact that new forms of machine learning may have on how people do their jobs — and how long those jobs may last.
The Stockholm-based Klarna, which sells payments and other financial services and is perhaps best known in the U.S. for
The bot didn't literally replace 700 people, but the statement led to a
In the month since the call-center bot's deployment, Klarna says it performed 2.3 million conversations, or 66% of Klarna's customer service engagements. It is on par with human agents in terms of customer satisfaction scoring, and has led to a 25% drop in repeat queries, which Klarna says makes the chatbot more accurate in query resolution.
The AI assistant is also faster. Consumers resolve their queries in an average of less than two minutes, compared to 11 minutes for human agents. Klarna also reports that there have been improvements in communication with immigrant and expat consumers due to language translation features in the AI chatbot.
In a research note, Moody's Investors Service said Klarna's AI deployment allows the firm to serve a larger and more diverse customer base.
"The results are impressive. Getting to that level of automated resolution likely required significant up-front work to ensure that the models have good training inputs, and ongoing work to make sure the models remain good," said Aaron Press, research director for Worldwide Payment Strategies at IDC. "That requires resources, but perhaps less than a room full of call center agents."
Who you gonna call?
Klarna's customer service chatbot resides in Klarna's app and is available in 23 markets in 35 languages, covering more than 150 million consumers. Klarna is also in the midst of
Klarna did not make an executive available for an interview. In an email from its public relations representative, Klarna said the AI deployment for customer service has not impacted Klarna's headcount. The company works with "four to five" customer-service partners that collectively have more than 650,000 employees and work with thousands of different companies. Klarna contends that when one company, such as Klarna, requires less support, the outsourced customer service agents are assigned to new tasks at another company.
"With the AI assistant, our customer service can operate with fewer people and require significantly less resources," Klarna's PR office said. "However, there still is a need for more experienced and senior staff, for example with specialized training in complex or sensitive cases. In addition, we will always offer the option for customers to speak with human agents if they prefer."
In a prepared quote for Klarna's press release touting the success of the AI assistant, Siemiatkowski said the AI assistant provides "superior experiences for our customers at better prices, more interesting challenges for our employees, and better returns for our investors."
But Siemiatkowski also voiced a note of concern, saying the launch "underscores the profound impact on society that AI will have. We want to reemphasize and encourage society and politicians to consider this carefully and believe a considerate, informed and steady stewardship will be critical to navigate through this transformation of our societies."
The future of AI
Siemiatkowski's quote did not elaborate, but one of the main fears the public has about AI is that it will eliminate jobs. AI could replace up to 300 million full-time jobs by 2030, according to
"AI will replace jobs and in cases do the jobs better than the humans who are replaced," said Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures. "But probably in more cases it will supplement or extend humans."
The Swedish financial institution chose to share the 700-person figure to indicate the long-term consequences of AI technology, Klarna's PR representative said. Klarna also plans to add other payment and shopping services to the AI assistant, though it did not provide details.
"We will see more results like this from other fintechs that do a lot of business online and through mobile platforms, because that is an ideal environment for chatbots," said Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting. "For companies with more complex product offerings, however, I have said before that many customers value a human agent, and that can be a competitive differentiator."
AI is being used more as a force multiplier, enabling employees to be more productive, and this would undoubtedly have an effect on future hiring, according to McPherson.
"In the past, new disruptive technologies have cost jobs, but also created new jobs replacing those lost," McPherson said. "The people who get the new jobs are not always the same people who lost their jobs, which can cause disruptions in local communities, but I suspect that customer service representatives are more geographically dispersed."
Klarna projects that its AI chatbot will save $40 million in costs in 2024, making AI a key driver for the company's balance sheet as it prepares a potential public listing.
"If Klarna can demonstrate a path to both grow revenue and lower costs, they will be much more attractive to investors," Press said.
