Klarna’s AI chatbot handles two-thirds of their customer support requests

Created time

Mar 5, 2024 08:05 AM

Author

Alex Rainey

Tags

Customer Support

Image

Publish date

Mar 6, 2024

Slug

klarna-incredible-new-ai-chatbot-for-customer-support

Featured

Type

Article

Ready to Publish

Klarna just dropped some jaw-dropping results after launching their new customer support AI chatbot last month.

The chatbot already does the work of 700 full-time agents, handles 65%+ of their support 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”.

Here’s a quick overview of what they launched:

An AI chatbot 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 chatbot can also provide smart actions within the chat. like extending the due date for a repayment

The chatbot can also provide rich answers, like a breakdown of fees from a recent transaction

Klarna’s new in-app AI chatbot for customer support

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 chatbot’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 chatbot is “in no way connected to the workforce reductions” in 2022.

So, what does this all mean?

This is really just the start. Klarna will be the first of many big companies announcing huge shake-ups in how they run customer support and how AI is playing a vital role in increasing company efficiency.

"Offering customer support in multiple languages is increasingly critical for software and apps serving a global user base. Customers expect seamless, efficient support in their preferred language, and companies that can meet this demand are more likely to build strong, loyal relationships. Large language models (LLMs) are playing a transformative role in making multilingual support a reality at scale. With LLMs, businesses can now provide high-quality, real-time assistance in dozens of languages, ensuring that no customer is left behind due to language barriers. This not only improves the user experience but also opens up new markets, driving growth and customer satisfaction. At Milengo, we’ve seen how localization combined with advanced AI technologies is reshaping the future of customer support, making it more efficient, accessible, and personalized than ever before." — Roman Kotzsch, CEO at Milengo

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.

Teleperformance’s shares took a nosedive after Klarna’s announcement

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 support. It’s not just about saving time for the team or being able to take on more customers without having to expand the team.

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 support will also help to give you an edge over your competitors.

Learn more: