It seems like just yesterday the ubiquitous buy-now-pay-later company Klarna was boasting about how they were happily replacing human workers with AI. Oh wait, it was. Co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said on CNBC’s Power Lunch yesterday that they’re down about 2,000 people. “If you go to LinkedIn and look at the jobs, you’ll see how we’re shrinking,” he said.
Not one to limit tech experiments to the geese but spare the gander, Klarna used an AI version of Siemiatkowski in a Q3 earnings video last year:Turns
UNCANNY. Uncanny as in unsettling, not as in resemblance.
Despite the AI bragging just yesterday, he had something different to say last week. Reports Bloomberg:
Klarna Group Plc’s chief executive says his pursuit of cost-cutting in customer service, fueled by advancements in artificial intelligence, has gone too far.
To that end, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, 43, is plotting a rare recruitment drive so the buy-now-pay-later company’s customers will always have the option of speaking to a real person, in a sign the Swedish fintech’s commitment to AI has its limits.
Speaking at the company’s headquarters in Stockholm, co-founder Siemiatkowski said the firm is piloting a new cohort of employees “in an Uber type of setup” where they can log in and work remotely, with a view to eventually replacing “the few thousand human agents” that Klarna currently outsources.
They’re cheap overseas labor, aren’t they?
“From a brand perspective, a company perspective,” Siemiatkowski said, “I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want.” See, customers weren’t enjoying the AI chatbots as much as Klarna management was enjoying the salary savings.
Wrote Gizmodo:
Klarna claimed that AI chatbots were handling two-thirds of customer service conversations within their first month of deployment and went on to claim that AI was doing the work of 700 customer service agents. The problem is that it’s really doing the work of 700 really bad agents, and that quality took a toll. “As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,” Siemiatkowski said. “Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.”
Before you get too excited about this reversal, know that this “recruitment drive” Bloomberg mentioned currently consists of two people. “The ambition is to tap into candidates such as students or rural populations,” said Bloomberg of Klarna’s plans going forward. That’s code for people who you can pay less than older people with years of experience.
“We also know there are tons of Klarna users that are very passionate about our company and would enjoy working for us,” he added. Also code for a company being cheap, nice.
Klarna was hoping for a big IPO this year but will be holding off for now.
Klarna Slows AI-Driven Job Cuts With Call for Real People [Bloomberg]
