New Delhi: Dukaan, a Made in India hosted e-commerce solution, laid off 90 per cent of the customer support team which was taken over by artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, founder and CEO Summit Shah took to Twitter to share the news.
The decision was taken in consideration of profitability. CEO Shah said that the customer support costs were reduced by 85 per cent and resolution time getting shortened from over two hours to mere three minutes.
We had to layoff 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot.
Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.
The results?
Time to first response went from 1m 44s to INSTANT!
Resolution time went from 2h 13m to 3m 12s
Customer support costs reduced by ~85%Here's how's we did it 🧵
— Suumit Shah (@suumitshah) July 10, 2023
After the CEO shared the news, many users on Twitter started criticising the bold step and called out Shah. In response, Shah said, ” Given the state of the economy, startups are prioritizing “profitability” over striving to become “unicorns,” and so are we. It’s less magical, sure, but at least it pays the bills.”
Shah further explained in detail about the AI assistant Luna which as per the company’s CEO replaces generic and delayed responses, as well as limited availability of resources and poor communication.
After a series of threads, responding to the users’ comments Shah mentioned that the company is hiring for multiple roles.
The news came after the union minister of MoS Rajeev Chandrasekhar gauged any concerns about AI threatening jobs as “nonsense.”
(Written by – Mahek Nigam
Edited By – Prateek Gautam)
