Is it reasonable to replace 90% of a company's employees with AI? This boss says yes.

The boss of an India-based company takes stock, one year after laying off 90% of his customer service staff to replace them with AI. And he says he's pretty happy with his choice, so far.

The case dates back to summer 2023. The boss of Dukaan, an Indian firm specializing in launching e-commerce sites, then decided to lay off 90% of its customer service staff. The decision caused a stir – sparking an outcry on social media.

The firm justified its decision by citing profitability concerns. However, replacing advisors with artificial intelligence immediately showed encouraging results. More than 200 ongoing chats with customers and around 1,400 incident tickets were quickly marked as resolved.

Dukaan's boss seems very satisfied with his decision

The average response time also went from nearly 2 minutes to a virtually instant response. A real revolution for the company, which has since been able to focus on its business services offering. A little over a year later, Suumit Shah, the head of Dukaan, reiterates the positive side of this AI integration.

The key is always to keep costs as low as possible, and above all, efficiency that has been previously unknown in this type of department. Obviously, beyond the success of the company, which sells complete online business offerings starting at $199 per year, there is the more general question of replacing employees with machines.

This question, however, remains difficult to answer in light of what happened at Dukaan. The company's activity as a whole, and particularly that of its customer service, is in fact rather conducive to a very advanced use of AI. Which is not yet entirely true in other sectors.

However, we note that other transnational firms whose activity takes place online are beginning to adopt a similar strategy, with massive layoffs in favor of AI. Duolingo has just confirmed the replacement of many employees by broad language models. The firm justifies its decision by its desire to become an "AI-first" company – in other words, one that places AI at the heart of all its activities.