Indian e-commerce firm replaces customer service agents with AI bot

NEW DELHI, INDIA — Dukaan, an Indian e-commerce platform, recently replaced 27 customer service agents with an AI chatbot named Lina. 

Dukaan CEO Suumit Shah made this move due to dissatisfaction with the human team’s generic responses to complex issues. However, the decision sparked debate about AI’s impact on jobs.

According to The Washington Post, Shah trained Lina using Dukaan’s help center content and then deployed the ChatGPT-powered chatbot to handle customer queries. Lina demonstrated the ability to provide intricate, lifelike answers, leading to higher satisfaction and significant cost savings.

“It was [a] no-brainer for me to replace the entire team with a bot, which is like 100 times smarter, who is instant, and who cost me like 100th of what I used to pay to the support team,” Shah told The Washington Post.

However, entrepreneurs adopting AI solutions like Shah also face workforce challenges. “That job is gone. 100 percent,” said Shah, indicating repetitive roles could be automated.

This reflects a broader industry shift towards AI chatbots replacing traditional call center workers. Startups, banks, and consumer goods firms are leveraging AI to enhance service while reducing expenses. 

However, automation threatens millions of outsourcing jobs in India and the Philippines. Imee Marcos, a Philippine senator, has called for an inquiry into workforce displacement, with estimates of 1.1 million jobs becoming obsolete by 2028. In India, companies like Dukaan are already replacing customer service workers with large language models like ChatGPT. 

While some argue AI can augment human workers, others express concerns about job difficulty, wage deflation, and the need for more experienced talent.