Suumit Shah, the founder and chief executive officer of Indian e-commerce start-up Dukaan, has fired at least 90% of his customer support staff after an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot outperformed them.
The move, according to Shah, was “absolutely” necessary, as the AI bot reduced the response times down to minutes against those spent by the staff, which took around two hours to do the same job.
The 31-year-old entrepreneur of the Bangalore-based startup — which helps traders launch digital storefronts and sell products online — broke the news in a tweet that has gone viral since it was first posted on Monday.
“We had to layoff 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely,” Shah wrote in his tweet.
The startup founder added that the AI tech made the response time for his company go from a minute to 44 seconds, almost an “instant”.
The entrepreneur, in his tweet, claimed that his company’s customer support costs were reduced by 85% as a result of tech intervention. Meanwhile, the resolution time went from two hours and 13 mins by his team to three minutes and 12 seconds by the chatbot.
Justifying his decision about the layoffs, Shah wrote that startups are prioritising “profitability” over “striving to become unicorns” in the country’s current state of the economy.
“It’s less magical, sure, but at least it pays the bills! Customer Support had been a struggle for us since long & fixing it felt like an opportunity to me,” he tweeted.
Sharing the journey of successfully experimenting with AI, the Dukaan founder stressed the struggle for customer support was “real”, hence his decision to move ahead with the firings.
However, he ended his tweet with an invitation to apply for other roles in his company, which currently employs 60 people, of which only three are part of the customer support team, reducing his monthly budget for the department to just $100.
“P.S. We’re hiring for multiple roles at Dukaan,” he tweeted.
“If you’re passionate about AI, E-commerce, Product Design… , you know how to reach out to us,” his tweet stated.
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