The news: Klarna is rethinking its AI-based customer service push, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg News.
Klarna is ramping up hiring to ensure customers can talk to a human customer service rep. The company will be replacing the “few thousand human agents” it outsources.
This is a sharp reversal from its prior plans. The company froze all non-engineer hiring in December 2023 to replace some labor with AI. As of last May, its OpenAI-powered chatbot helped two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service requests and did the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.
Why it matters: Klarna has been a leader in using AI for customer service in the retail space. It was part of the company’s push to cut costs ahead of its IPO (which was recently delayed due to market volatility).
While it estimated the AI assistant would drive a $40 million profit improvement last year, Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg that cost was “a too predominant evaluation factor” that hurt Klarna’s customer service quality.