Company was taken over by a robot and fired 90% of its employees
We've reduced customer service costs by 85%
Dunkaan’s founder and CEO says, “We’ve reduced customer service costs by 85% and virtually eliminated turnaround times.”
Sumit Shah, a manager in India, fired 23 of the 26 customer service employees on his e-commerce platform and replaced them with an artificial intelligence system. As the founder and CEO of Dunkaan, he described this experience as very impressive and rewarding.
Via Twitter, the Indian entrepreneur explains: “We fired 90% of our customer support team thanks to this AI chatbot. Was it difficult? Yes, it was. Was it necessary? Absolutely.”
When asked by CNN, Sumit Shah said the layoffs of the 23 employees took place last September. They took advantage of the growth of this technology to transform the way customer service works with an AI-based chatbot. The manager admits this came at a cost to the employees who were made redundant.
Despite the cost to the employees who left, both the company and customers benefited significantly from this move. “The response time to customer requests has dropped to zero, while the time to resolve their issues has gone from 2 hours and 13 minutes to 3 minutes and 12 seconds,” Sumit Shah told CNN.
However, there is backlash and concerns about the layoff of workers and the social implications of artificial intelligence. Some netizens are reacting positively, while others are expressing concern about the laid-off employees and the help being provided to them.
Studies have also pointed to the risk of jobs being replaced by artificial intelligence. According to Goldman Sachs, around 300 million jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence without any impact on business operations.
