Alex RaineyAlex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
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Klarna's AI handled 2.3 million conversations in its first month — the work of 700 full-time agents — cutting resolution time from 11 to 2 minutes.
In February 2024, Klarna dropped some jaw-dropping results, a month after launching their new customer service AI agent.
The agent already does the work of 700 full-time agents, handles 65%+ of their service requests and is on track to drive an extra $40 million in profit this year alone.
Let that sink in.
Klarna has 5,000 employees with 150 million active consumers.
Even they couldn’t believe the results and just said “the numbers speak for themselves”.
What did Klarna’s AI agent do?
Klarna's AI agent answers account and payment questions inside the Klarna app, 24/7 and in 35 languages, and the launch included:
- An AI-powered customer service agent that can be accessed via the Klarna app, called “your personal financial assistant”, likely built with OpenAI’s help, whom they have a public partnership with.
- Can help customers with almost any question about their account, recent payments, or the Klarna product more generally
- Has live access to customer profiles and recent transactions
- Available 24/7 and can speak 35 languages
- Customers still have the option to speak with a human agent if they prefer (which is provided by ~4 different third-party customer service providers)
- As well as answering questions, the agent can also provide smart actions within the chat. like extending the due date for a repayment
- The agent can also provide rich answers, like a breakdown of fees from a recent transaction
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What was the impact?
And these are the results after 1 month live:
- 2.3 million conversations, which is ~66% of Klarna’s total customer service chats
- This work would normally require 700 full-time support agents
- The AI agent’s customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) are on par with human support agents
- 81% drop in resolution time, from 11 minutes to 2 minutes
- Lead to a 25% drop in repeat inquiries
In 2022, Klarna made a lot of noise when it laid off 10% (~700 people) of its workforce. But they told FastCompany the new AI agent is “in no way connected to the workforce reductions” in 2022.
So, what does this all mean?
Klarna's results are really just the start. Klarna will be the first of many big companies announcing huge shake-ups in how they run customer service and how AI is playing a vital role in increasing company efficiency.
As hard as it is to believe we’re in the infancy stage of AI models (LLMs). It’s only this year they’re being used in production use cases - where they’re being relied on for vital business functions, and have a measurable impact on key metrics.
This means the capability will quickly be 5-10x where it is right now in just a few years. If you think 66% of support tickets resolved by AI is impressive.
Imagine 80% or 90% reductions.
The impact of what this Klarna announcement meant was immediately felt on the stock market. Teleperformance, a large $9Bn/year call centre provider, saw its shares drop almost 15% over the concerns AI will significantly disrupt their business.
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What can you do as a business?
Start to adopt AI (like ChatGPT) as a tool internally to increase productivity, building up “AI literacy” amongst your workforce.
But more importantly, start by looking at how you can leverage AI, with platforms like My AskAI, to supercharge the efficiency and quality of your customer service, see My AskAI plans here.
It’s not just about saving time for the team or being able to take on more customers without having to expand the team.
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It’s about your existing support team being freed up to more quickly resolve the more complex tickets that do require a human touch. Your team is no longer dealing with basic level 1 tickets all day.
Now they’re focused on level 2 and 3 tickets, helping to retain your most valuable customers.
This levelling up of your customer service will also help to give you an edge over your competitors.
Learn more:
- Klarna press release: https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/
- FastCompany article: https://www.fastcompany.com/91039401/klarna-ai-virtual-assistant-does-the-work-of-700-humans-after-layoffs
- Klarna x OpenAI partnership: https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-brings-smoooth-shopping-to-chatgpt/
Written by
Alex Rainey
Alex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
