SaaS platform Dukaan hires AI chatbot, fires 90% of support staff

NEW DELHI :Homegrown SaaS platform for online stores, Dukaan, has laid off 90 per cent of support staff after introducing an AI chatbot for customer support.

Dukaan Founder and CEO Suumit Shah said that given the state of economy, startups are prioritising “profitability” over striving to become “unicorns,” and so are we.

“We had to lay off 90 per cent of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely,” he posted on Twitter.

The results, according to him, was that time to first response went from 1.44 minutes to instant, resolution time went from 2.12 hours to 3.12 minutes and customer support costs were reduced by 85 per cent.

“It’s less magical, sure, but at least it pays the bills! Customer Support had been a struggle for us for a long time and fixing it felt like an opportunity to me,” said Shah.

The chatbot, called Lina, marked over 1,400 support tickets as resolved, but that was only the beginning of Dukaan’s AI revolution, according to Shah.

“Imagine having your own AI assistant, who knows your business inside out & can answer customer queries instantly, 24/7. And not just generic queries but queries that are user/account specific,” the Dukaan CEO said.

He also said that they are hiring for multiple roles at Dukaan.

“If you’re passionate about AI, e-commerce, product design and want to be part of the team, you know how to reach out to us,” he posted.