New Delhi: Made in India hosted e-commerce solution Dukan has laid off 90 per cent of its customer support team, which was replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, Founder and CEO Shikhar Shah took to Twitter to share the news.
This decision was taken keeping in view the profitability. CEO Shah said that the customer support cost has been reduced by 85 percent and the resolution time has come down from two hours to just three minutes.
We had to lay off 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot.
Difficult? Yes. essential? Absolutely.
Result?
First response time went from 1 minute 44 seconds to instant!
Resolution time increased from 2h 13m to 3m 12m
Customer support costs reduced by ~85%Here’s how we did it 🧵
-Sumit Shah (@suumitsha) 10 July 2023
After the CEO shared the news, many users on Twitter started criticizing the bold move and criticized Shah. In response, Shah said, ”Looking at the state of the economy, startups are prioritizing “profitability” rather than striving to become “unicorns” and so are we. It’s certainly less magical, but at least it pays the bills.
Shah elaborated on the AI assistant Luna that replaces generic and delayed responses, as well as limited availability of resources and poor communication, according to the company’s CEO.
After a series of threads, replying to users’ comments, Shah mentioned that the company is hiring for multiple roles.
The news came after Union Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar dismissed as “nonsense” any concerns about AI threatening jobs.