According to a new report in the Insider, an Indian CEO has ignited a debate online, after announcing he had laid off 90 percent of his employees working in customer support because he had found that an AI chatbot had outperformed them for a fraction of the cost.
Suumit Shah, a 31-year-old CEO of an Indian e-commerce platform named Dukaan tweeted, “We had to layoff [sic] 90 percent of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.”
In the Twitter thread, Shah said that the response times of his customer support went from over two hours, to under two minutes after he began utilizing the AI chatbot.
Not everyone accepted Shah’s story of cutting his customer support budget to under $100 per month however. One Twitter user wrote, “Make no mistake. The support team was laid off here because business is failing and funding is dry. Not because of AI.”
Others argued that without real people servicing customer needs, his customer service experience was less effective, and it would cost him business in the long run. A customer wrote, “It wasn’t answering as I needed it to. I tried tweaking my questions several ways because I know it was a bot. It just didn’t reply properly. It left me frustrated and ultimately didn’t bother renewing my premium plan.”
One Redditor worried what it would mean more broadly if more CEOs followed in Shah’s footprints, writing, “I’m terrified of the future where we will never speak to a human again in customer support which means we will never get a problem solved you’ll just be passed around between bots.”
In an interview, Shah told the Insider his only regret was posting what he had done on social media. He said, “Over time, everybody will start doing this. It’s not just us. Maybe I’m just too straightforward to have put it on Twitter.”
Insider pointed out that he was likely right, given the recent spates of layoffs at tech companies, as the companies were simultaneously investing in AI. Researchers and analysts have noted, AI is very likely to remake the modern workplace, eliminating many jobs currently performed by people.
