Klarna is flip-flopping on its AI-first strategy.
Last year, the company suggested that investment in AI could help reduce its staff by more than half.
Before that, Klarna launched an AI assistant that it claimed could do the work of 700 full-time contact center agents.
However, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, has acknowledged that he underestimated the need for the human touch in customer service.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Siemiatkowski revealed that the buy-now-pay-later specialist’s relentless pursuit of AI had led to a drop in customer service and experience standards.
“As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,” he explained.
Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.
“From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want.”
Interestingly, Siemiatkowski’s remarks about “lower quality” seem to contradict previous information released by the company that AI had helped reduce query resolution rates from 11 minutes to just two minutes, and that customer satisfaction scores had remained steady.
Of course, these numbers could have regressed since. Alternatively, other customer experience metrics may have been impacted.
A Human-First Vision for Klarna
In practical terms, Siemiatkowski’s announcement means a U-turn on Klarna’s hiring policy.
Having previously cut over 1000 roles, implemented a hiring freeze, and deployed a customer-facing virtual assistant, the company is now looking to recruit new, human customer service agents.
Siemiatkowski explained that rather than offering agents traditional contact center roles, Klarna is instead looking to test an “Uber-type of setup” that will allow them to work remotely and provide greater flexibility.
While the CEO has not provided further details on how this strategy will work, Uber-style setups can help access a broader talent pool, increase staffing flexibility, and lower administrative costs.
However, as AI automates many transactional queries and live agents take on more complex tasks, some may question the merits of a gig model.
Additionally, it is worth noting that Uber’s gig workers, who are classified as independent contractors, often miss out on traditional benefits like healthcare, sick pay, and minimum wage guarantees.
A Surprising Change of Heart
Given the fact that Siemiatkowski has in the past spoken about wanting to be ChatGPT’s “favorite guinea pig” and used an AI-generated version of himself to deliver the company’s financial results, the decision to now focus more on human agents comes as a surprise.
The change of direction was first mentioned by the CEO in a post on X back in February, where he wrote that “in a world of AI nothing will be as valuable as humans!”
We just had an epiphany: in a world of AI nothing will be as valuable as humans!
Ok you can laugh at us for realizing it so late, but we are going to kick off work to allow Klarna to become the best at offering a human to speak to!!!
So excited about this, more to come!
— Sebastian Siemiatkowski (@klarnaseb) February 14, 2025
So why exactly has Siemiatkowski soured on AI?
First and foremost, it is important to note that while Klarna had been outspoken about its commitment to and belief in AI, it does still currently offer human agents.
However, these agents come from third-party service providers. In directly employing new agents, Klarna is shifting from outsourcing to insourcing.
With this in mind, part of the refocus may be financially motivated, as it is often more cost-effective to keep things in-house when a company has adequate infrastructure and resources.
Away from the profit margins, Siemiatkowski’s comments about the importance of humans in the contact center represent a growing feeling within the space.
A recent study of over 7,000 customers released by Accenture found that only 18 percent of people feel that technology has improved their customer service experiences.
As one respondent put it, “[it is] becoming more work to be a customer,” while another likened the difficulty of using chatbots to “winning the lottery”.
Indeed, chatbots in particular have made a number of high-profile errors in recent years.
Most recently, Cursor – a coding assistant from AI startup Anysphere – faced backlash after its chatbot invented a non-existent company policy.
Elsewhere, the likes of Air Canada, DPD, and Virgin Money have all faced criticism for notable chatbot gaffes.
Until Klarna’s Uber-style system goes live, we can only speculate on how the business will utilize AI moving forward.
Having committed so much time and resources to the tech and reported such significant improvements, it is hard to imagine that Klarna will completely flip the switch and become a human-first company.
However, it is clear that Siemiatkowski’s view on AI in CX has shifted drastically in a short period of time, and it will be fascinating to see whether other CEOs follow suit or double down on the tech.
Siemiatkowski Continues to Make Headlines
Prior to the most recent interview with Bloomberg, back in March, Siemiatkowski took to X to clarify misconceptions about the company’s decision to stop using Salesforce.
The confusion began after Klarna’s investor call in August last year, where Siemiatkowski mentioned discontinuing Salesforce as a SaaS provider.
Due to Klarna’s close ties with OpenAI, speculation quickly spread that the company had replaced Salesforce with AI and LLMs.
The rumors gained enough traction to prompt a public response from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Dreamforce, where he questioned Klarna’s approach to managing customer data.
