---
title: "Klarna's bot did 700 agents' work; 15 months later it was hiring humans"
summary: "Klarna's February 2024 claim, its May 2025 walk-back and Gartner's survey of 5,728 customers: where AI belongs in a support queue, as of September 2026."
url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/10-ways-use-ai-customer-service-enhanced
format: Note
desk: "AI in the enterprise"
published: 2025-09-24
facts_checked: 2026-09-30
author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal)
tags: ["AI customer service","chatbots","Klarna","Gartner","human handoff","helpdesk","DPDP","CERT-In","GST"]
cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/10-ways-use-ai-customer-service-enhanced.png
---

# Klarna's bot did 700 agents' work; 15 months later it was hiring humans

*Klarna's February 2024 claim, its May 2025 walk-back and Gartner's survey of 5,728 customers: where AI belongs in a support queue, as of September 2026.*

Note · AI in the enterprise · By TechBag · Published 2025-09-24 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/10-ways-use-ai-customer-service-enhanced

AI belongs on the routine two-thirds of a support queue and fails the moment it stands between a customer and a person. Klarna proved the first half in February 2024, when its assistant took 2.3 million conversations in a month.[1] It proved the second half in May 2025, when its chief executive said the company would hire human agents again.[2] In between, Gartner found that the top fear among 5,728 customers was not a wrong answer but a closed door.[4]

The 2023 version of this piece listed ten ways to use AI in service, from chatbots to fraud detection, and opened with five statistics. The buyer’s question is narrower: how much of the queue can a bot take, and what does it cost you when it takes too much?

TechBag countWhy the 2023 statistics are gone

Of the five figures the original cited, two were forecasts for 2020 and 2022, years already over when it was published, and none of the five named a report or a date. We dropped all five rather than repeat them.

## The 700-agent month, and the walk-back

Klarna’s release of 27 February 2024 is the most quoted number in this market. In its first month the assistant handled two-thirds of customer-service chats, did “the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents”, cut the time to resolve an errand from 11 minutes to under 2, reduced repeat inquiries by 25%, and ran in 23 markets and more than 35 languages. Klarna estimated a US$40 million profit improvement for 2024.[1]

700

full-time agents' worth of work, done by Klarna's assistant in its first month

Two-thirds of chats, February 2024. Fifteen months later Klarna said it would hire human agents again.

Fifteen months later Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg that “investing in the quality of human support is the way of the future for us” and that “there will always be a human if you want.” Klarna had paused hiring for more than a year and its headcount had fallen 22% to about 3,500, mostly by attrition.[2]

Our view

Both announcements can be true. The bot did take the volume; what it could not do was the remaining third, and a customer who could not get past it went elsewhere or came back angrier. Klarna never published the resolution quality of the AI-handled chats, which is the number a buyer needs.

## The fear is the closed door, not the wrong answer

Gartner surveyed 5,728 customers in December 2023 and published on 9 July 2024: 64% would prefer companies did not use AI in customer service, and 53% would consider switching to a competitor if they found out a company was going to.[3] The breakdown of their concerns is the useful part.

**Figure: Customers fear losing the route to a person more than they fear a wrong answer**

*Share of customers naming each concern about AI in customer service, survey of 5,728, December 2023*

Harder to reach a person

60%

AI displacing jobs

46%

AI giving wrong answers

42%

Customer data less secure

34%

Biased treatment

25%

|  | Value (%) |
| --- | --- |
| Harder to reach a person | 60 |
| AI displacing jobs | 46 |
| AI giving wrong answers | 42 |
| Customer data less secure | 34 |
| Biased treatment | 25 |

Source: Gartner customer survey, as reported by DIGIT · as of 9 July 2024

Gartner’s own advice follows from it: a chatbot should tell the customer, up front, that it will hand over to an agent when it cannot solve the problem.[3] Our rule for a pilot is the same in three lines. Put the route to a person on the first screen. Measure resolution and repeat contacts, not deflection. Keep the bot on the routine requests, such as order status, password resets and refunds within policy, until those numbers hold for a quarter.

## Buying it in India

The AI agent is now the larger line on a small team’s helpdesk bill: five published price lists charge US$0.49 to US$2.00 per AI-handled conversation, and they count different things.[5] Most are in US dollars; bought through an Indian reseller they arrive as an INR invoice with 18% GST, bought direct from abroad the GST is yours to self-account under reverse charge. The transcripts are personal data under the DPDP Act, 2023; its Rules were notified on 13 November 2025 and the substantive duties apply from 13 May 2027.[6] A breach of the bot vendor’s platform is reportable to CERT-In within six hours under its Directions of 28 April 2022.[7] Banks add RBI’s Directions of 31 July 2026, which require audit and RBI inspection rights in vendor contracts.[8] Ask where the transcripts are stored before you ask what the bot costs.

How we did this

Figures as of 30 September 2026

Klarna’s figures are its own, from its February 2024 release; none was independently audited. The May 2025 quotations are Bloomberg’s interview as reported by Entrepreneur; the Bloomberg article was not fetched. The survey totals come from Gartner’s release; the concern breakdown in the chart is as reported by DIGIT the same day, because Gartner’s page was not reachable in full. Respondents could name more than one concern, so the bars do not sum to 100. The per-conversation price range is taken from the earlier TechBag post linked below, not re-collected.

Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece.

Sources

1. [Klarna, Klarna AI assistant handles two-thirds of customer service chats in its first month](https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/) — 27 February 2024
2. [Entrepreneur, Klarna is hiring customer service agents after AI couldn’t cut it, citing Bloomberg](https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/klarna-ceo-reverses-course-by-hiring-more-humans-not-ai/491396) — 9 May 2025
3. [Gartner, Survey finds 64% of customers would prefer that companies didn’t use AI for customer service](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-07-09-gartner-survey-finds-64-percent-of-customers-would-prefer-that-companies-didnt-use-ai-for-customer-service) — 9 July 2024
4. [DIGIT, 64% of people don’t want companies to use AI in customer service (concern breakdown)](https://www.digit.fyi/?p=101930) — 9 July 2024
5. [TechBag blog, An AI support chat costs US$0.49 to US$2.00: five price lists, compared](https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/ai-driven-b2c-conversation) — 14 January 2025 Prices as stated in that post.
6. [DPDP Rules 2025, commencement timeline](https://legismith.com/dpdp-rules-2025-timeline/) — notified 13 November 2025
7. [CERT-In, Directions under section 70B(6) of the IT Act (six-hour reporting)](https://www.cert-in.org.in/Directions70B.jsp) — 28 April 2022
8. [RBI, Cybersecurity, Technology Risk and Resilience Framework Directions, 2026, via practitioner summary](https://taxguru.in/rbi/rbi-issues-commercial-banks-cybersecurity-technology-risk-resilience-framework-directions-2026.html) — 31 July 2026 RBI PDF not fetched.

Related on TechBag: the [per-conversation price comparison](https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/ai-driven-b2c-conversation) sets the five AI price lists side by side; the [service desk guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/itsm-service-desk) covers the platforms these agents run inside.

**Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view.

Go deeper on TechBag

- [ITSM & service desk guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/itsm-service-desk) — the platforms AI agents run inside, and their AI add-ons
- [Zoho Desk intel page](https://www.thetechbag.com/zoho/zoho-desk) — a helpdesk priced in rupees, with Zia AI
- [Freshdesk intel page](https://www.thetechbag.com/freshworks/freshdesk) — Freshworks' helpdesk and its Freddy AI