Klarna CEO Siemiatkwsi wanted to replace employees with AI – now he has changed his mind
Klarna wants to reduce the use of artificial intelligence in direct customer contact. According to the CEO, quality has suffered due to AI.
Klarna is currently taking an unusual approach to staffing. The Swedish fintech company aims to reduce the replacement of customer service employees with artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported.
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkwsi believes AI development has gone too far. Quality has deteriorated. Every customer should have the opportunity to speak to a real employee. "I think it's very important to make it clear to the customer that a human is always there if they need it," Siemiatkwsi says.
To achieve this, he wants to hire new staff in an Uber -like model. The many thousands of people currently outsourced will be replaced by people who work remotely. Bloomberg reports that small pilots for the system are currently underway. In the future, students, people from rural areas, or even fans of the company will be able to work in these positions.
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Klarna was one of the first companies to cooperate with OpenAI . At the time, the fintech company was forced to reduce costs and wanted to achieve this with artificial intelligence. They were able to replace 700 customer service employees with AI by 2024. However, the quality was still not good enough to maintain this level.
Klarna, however, doesn't want to completely abandon technology. The company is currently working on a digital financial assistant. It will negotiate interest rates and insurance premiums for customers in the future. This will also further reduce the number of employees. According to Bloomberg, Siemiatkowski believes that the number of employees will be reduced from 3,000 to 2,500 in a year. Depending on technological developments, this number could even increase.
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