Today, it is challenging to come across a company that does not want to utilise generative AI. Prominent leaders in every organisation are eager to discuss their endeavours in leveraging generative AI capabilities. However, as the adoption of this technology expands, there arises a parallel need to exercise responsible usage, balancing between harnessing the benefits of AI and preserving the value of human jobs.
A recent incident in the Indian startup landscape has highlighted the importance of responsible use of AI. Dukaan, a DIY platform that enables merchants with zero programming skills to set up their e-commerce business, recently laid off 90% of support staff and replaced them with an AI chatbot named Lina.
“We had to lay off 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely,” Suumit Shah, founder & chief executive at Dukaan, said in a tweet. He received immense backlash with many calling him insensitive, lacking empathy and even heartless.
Shah claims leveraging AI reduced Dukaan’s customer support costs by 85%. At the same time, he also mentioned that the time required for the initial response had reduced from 1 minute and 44 seconds to an instant. Further, the resolution time had slashed from an average of 2 hours and 13 minutes to 3 minutes and 12 seconds.
However, how a company handles layoffs tells a lot about the company and its leadership. In today’s growing competitive landscape, companies prioritise shareholder value creation above everything else. The ‘humane’ aspect of running a company somewhere gets lost. Often things like employee welfare, sustainability, or even consumer protection are in the bottom half of their priority list, or in some cases, not a part of it at all.
Lessons from Zerodha
What Dukaan did was not extraordinary. They implemented an AI-powered chatbot that now answers customer’s queries instead of humans. AI-bots are not new either, and the thing is, it is something that has been contemplated by others as well, in the Indian startup ecosystem.
“It took us 30 mins to integrate commoditised ChatGPT, see tangible benefits, and realise that more than 20% ( 200 approx) of jobs could be automated. Now, imagine what more intelligent tools could lead to?,” Nithin Kamath, founder & CEO at Zerodha said, earlier this year.
Through a blog post, Zerodha revealed that they are not going to be using AI just for ‘the sake of using it.’ The stock broker company said they will only use AI when they find the right use case.
What’s commendable is Zerodha will not fire anyone on the team just because it has implemented a new piece of technology that makes an earlier job redundant. Moreover, the startup has formulated an internal AI policy to provide clarity to its team members, addressing concerns and alleviating anxiety related to AI and potential job losses.
Unlike Shah, Kamath was showered with praises by the internet. However, how many companies are willing to take a similar approach is the question? In the global landscape, another commendable example is Swedish multinational conglomerate brand IKEA. The furniture giant also introduced an AI-powered chatbot called Billie to support customer support.
But, rather than resorting to employee layoffs, the company is taking a proactive approach by retraining its call centre employees to transition into roles as interior design advisors. Here, it is important to note that various factors such as market condition, financial condition, and profitability of a company also play crucial roles in such decisions. Let’s take Zerodha for example, which is a profitable company. In FY 2023, the company could make INR2500 crores in profit, reports said.
“Businesses with financial freedom should, if nothing else, give their teams that helped build the business time to adapt,” Kamath said. Hence, for Zerodha, or even IKEA, it might appear easy to retain their employees compared to Dukaan. However, Shah, in March 2023, did reveal that Dukaan is also growing its revenues at a healthy pace, after it decided to shift its focus on larger brands from small kiranas.
Blame it on AI
Today, we are in the age of generative AI, and it does bring significant advantages to businesses. Many businesses are in fact, looking at leveraging the power of Large Language Models (LLM) to improve their contact centres and customer support team. In fact, it was envisaged that customer support is the first segment that will be impacted by generative AI.
However, industry leaders AIM has spoken to think otherwise. They feel that generative AI will only make customer support agents more efficient and add to productivity of the organisation. AI is still not at a stage to completely take care of customer support of a company.
“Generative AI enables human agents to focus on more complex and value-added activities that require critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity,” Gaurav Singh, founder, and chief executive at Verloop, told AIM.
Even though Shah claims his chatbot has improved his customer support, experts are of the opinion that AI is still not a stage to handle complex customer support queries at this stage.
“Many companies will likely let go of employees and blame it on AI. In the process, companies will earn more and make their shareholders wealthier, worsening wealth inequality,” Kamath predicted earlier this year. Hence, going forward, another company laying off its employees and blaming it on AI might not be surprising.
The post What Can Dukaan Learn from Zerodha? appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
