Klarna's AI chatbot shakes up customer service
Interesting Analysis From Eugene Mandel on Klarna's Chatbot
As a reminder, Swedish Buy Now Pay Later giant Klarna dropped a bombshell in the customer service space this February when it unveiled the results of its homegrown, OpenAI-based chatbot.
This AI assistant handled a staggering 2/3 of all customer chats after just one month, doing the work of 700 FTEs with lower error rates, faster resolutions, and CSat on par with human service.
The announcement came after Gartner predicted last August that, by 2026, investment in generative AI will lead to a 20% to 30% reduction in customer service and support agents.
Eugene took this chatbot for a spin and found a very fluid experience with solid intent understanding and impressive multi-lingual support.
He also noted that the majority of questions were about product returns, which, for BNPL providers, translates into a response... pointing to the merchants' sites.
This aligns with Gartner’s research on the variability of resolution rates by service issues:
Eugene's analysis points to the impressive progress of the technology but also keeps us honest that the full automation of customer service interactions can vary heavily based on the type of inquiry.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, has since notably shifted his stance.
In February 2025, he posted on Twitter: "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!!!"
By May, in an interview with Bloomberg, he admitted that overreliance on AI had hurt service quality: "As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality."