What would you have done? Klarna replaced 700 service agents with AI — then brought humans back

In 2024, Klarna handed two-thirds of its customer service to AI — the equivalent of 700 agents. A year later, quality dropped on complex and emotional cases, and the company started rehiring humans. Three options had been on the table: (A) automate everything to cut costs; (B) automate simple requests and keep humans for the rest; (C) change nothing.

Klarna had chosen (A). Its CEO admitted: “We focused too much on efficiency and cost; the result was lower quality.” It shifted to (B), guaranteeing customers can always reach a human. The lesson: automate the repetitive task, not the relationship — and keep a human fallback available for sensitive cases.

Source: remarks by Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, reported by Bloomberg and Forbes, May 2025.