This is the director of an Indian company, who received a wave of criticism on social networks, because he replaced 90% of his customer service workers with ‘chatbots’ from artificial intelligence (AI).
Entrepreneur Suumit Shah, founder of Dukaan, posted on his official Twitter account that the ‘chatbot’ improved and optimized calls, because they solve customer concerns in less time. This was reported by the BBC.
As expected, the tweet generated outrage among the majority of Internet users, because worldwide there is enormous concern among service workers, due to the advancement of AI.
We had to layoff 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot.
Tough? Forks. necessary? Absolutely.
The results?
Time to first response went from 1m 44s to INSTANT!
Resolution time went from 2h 13m to 3m 12s
Customer support costs reduced by ~85%Here’s how we did it 🧵
— Suumit Shah (@suumitshah) July 10, 2023
“It was a ‘tough’ decision, but ‘necessary’”
This is how the businessman justified that several employees have stayed without their livelihood. He argued that: “given the state of the economy, startups are prioritizing profitability over trying to become ‘unicorns,’ and so are we”.
In the same way, he pointed out that customer service was always a problem in his business that he always wanted to solve, so the decision was made.
He also announced that they created the bot and the artificial intelligence platform in a very short time, so that all Dukaan customers can be served “effectively”.
This type of technology, according to the businessman, has speed and precision to attend to queries. “In the age of instant gratification, starting a business is no longer a distant dream (…). With the right idea, the right team, anyone can turn their entrepreneurial dreams into reality.”he added.
Despite the fact that the CEO pointed out that they are hiring staff for multiple functions, he received forceful responses on social networks, asserting that it is a way of justifying the “ruthless” decision that, according to Internet users, upset the stability of the now unemployed.