Suumit Shah, founder and CEO of Bangalore-based e-commerce company Dukaan, said that the bot, which was built by one of the firm’s data scientists, could respond to initial queries instantly, compared to staff taking an average of one minute and 44 seconds.
Shah, who founded the company in 2020, said the layoffs were ‘tough’ but ‘necessary,’ during a time that many others in the tech industry and elsewhere are unsure about their job security as AI’s presence grows.
The time taken to resolve a customer’s issue also apparently dropped by almost 98 per cent on average when using the chatbot – from two hours and 13 minutes, to three minutes and 12 seconds.
His company’s move is just a small part of the global trend towards AI, which has seen plenty of other job losses.
He shared a thread on Twitter detailing how he had replaced 90 per cent of his customer support staff with an AI chatbot
The company’s move is just a small part of the global move towards AI, which has seen plenty of other job losses
He tweeted in a thread: ‘Given the state of [the] economy, startups are prioritizing “profitability” over striving to become “unicorns,” and so are we.’
Shah added that the job cuts have cut the cost of its customer support function by about 85 per cent, an area which had been a long-term problem for them.
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