After AI offensive: Klarna focuses more on human customer service again

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Klarna's CEO explained in an interview that the company is currently conducting a test run with human customer advisors. Last year, the fintech company made headlines for allegedly not having hired anyone for twelve months – Artificial intelligence is doing the work instead.

Back in February 2024, the company declared that AI was doing the work of 700 full-time employees in processing customer inquiries. In terms of customer satisfaction, the technology was on a par. At the time, the report led to a slump in the share price of the world's largest operator of call centers.

Use of AI does have its limits

However, it is precisely in this area that Klarna now wants to rely more on people again. As Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski explained in an interview with Bloomberg, his company is once again hiring call center employees to ensure that Klarna customers can always speak to a real person if necessary. Bloomberg suggests: There are limits to the use of AI, with regard to the radical commitment to the technology by Klarna.

That sounds very different from December. Siemiatkowski was represented by an AI-generated copy when presenting the business figures. For him, this was proof that the technology really could take over all jobs in the end, the CEO explained.

Klarna is currently relying on service providers

In the current interview with Bloomberg, Siemiatkowski was still enthusiastic about AI, but admitted that Klarna's radical strategy had also led to a loss of service quality. The company wanted to achieve massive cost savings through the use of AI.

However, it is not the case that Klarna customers have always had to make do with an AI when contacting customer service. This is because there are several thousand customer advisors at service providers who take care of Klarna customers' concerns. Siemiatkowski wants to replace them with Klarna employees in the future – In other words: insourcing instead of outsourcing.

Jobs for students and the "rural population"

Siemiatkowski does not give specific figures on newly hired customer advisors; he speaks of a small group as part of a pilot project. The employees will also be able to work from their home office. Students or the "rural population", for example, are eligible for the job.

Klarna was one of the first companies to enter into a partnership with OpenAI in 2023. Siemiatkowski said at the time that his company wanted to become the tech giants' "favorite guinea pig". The principle of Klarna microloans: customers can initially pay for their purchase at a retailer that cooperates with Klarna using Klarna fast credit. They then settle their debts in installments or in full with Klarna.

Number of employees to fall nonetheless

Siemiatkowski's enthusiasm for AI was no coincidence: Klarna's valuation had previously plummeted by around 85 percent in a financing round, from 45.6 billion US dollars to 6.7 billion US dollars. Siemiatkowski saw the difficult economic situation as the cause.

The CEO does not want the new human customer advisors to be considered a major change: He still expects a fluctuation rate of 20 percent this year and assumes that 2,500 of the 3,000 employees will be left by the end of the year.

(nen)