Klarna's CEO just had an epiphany about AI and human support
Having spent quite a lot of time discussing a radical approach to adopting AI over the past year or so, Klarna's CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski took to Twitter with a slightly different message recently:
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!
He then continued:
We will continue to invest and improve our AI support. But the truth is the cost savings it generates and improvement in quality. Allows us to double down on making sure the human service part of Klarna becomes even better. More to come!
I think we can probably modify Jane Austen's fabulous opening line to Pride and Prejudice thus:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that human support is mostly better than AI
There are exceptions and limitations to this of course. Witness, for example, the great success that the team at Inicio.ai are having with their debt collection bot, Budgie (where it seems humans actually prefer interacting with AI in this instance).
It might be better to modify that statement to something like:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that human support is absolutely and wholly preferable in any high-value interaction
We see this is a lot in financial services, for instance. When my debit card needs replaced, I don't want any fuss. I don't want to inconvenience a human either. I just want the task completed as quickly as possible. Don't give me the time of day. Don't ask about the family. Don't bother with small talk, just get it done.
So in many situations, an AI is just better – provided it's quick, smart and accurate.
But when it comes to high(er) value interactions like investment decisions or buying a house, that's where I want brilliant support – preferably from a human.
In many cases though, this has been very difficult to achieve when your call centre or branches are filled with customers messing about with low value interactions because there's no other alternative.
So - welcome aboard Sebastian - I think a hybrid approach is the way ahead. It's just about balancing cost, accuracy and experience.
I'm a customer of Klarna. I have been ever since I lived in the Nordics. It's a brilliantly conceived service and I love the it-just-works approach. Generally speaking, I have no need or wish to speak to a Klarna human though – as long as everything's working, it's fine. But when things go wrong, yeah... that's when it would be useful to connect with a human.
You can follow more of Sebastian's updates on X here: https://x.com/klarnaseb
