31 minutes
DUKAAN was founded in June 2020 by Suumit Shah and Subhash Choudhary, the company’s co-founder and CTO. His business serves as a DIY platform that enables retailers and merchants to build up their online store even if they have no programming experience.
Subsequently, Shah recently revealed on Twitter that 90% of his customer service staff in Bengaluru would be laid off.
The CEO attributed the 85% drop in customer service costs and the 3-minute drop in resolution time to the choice to prioritise profitability.
He has, however, received a lot of criticism for his choice. Shah did point out, however, that the business is still looking to fill a number of positions.
Even though he has a vast and interesting resume, Shah had recently experienced outrage on social media due to his Tweet about firing 90% of his customer support team for an AI program by the name of Lina.
The tweet, which was sent on July 11, read something like this:
“This AI chatbot forced us to fire 90% of our support staff,“ the company said. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely. The outcomes? First response time decreased from 1 minute 44 seconds to INSTANT! Resolution time was decreased from 2h 13m to 3m 12s, and customer support expenses were cut by 85%.”
He described ‘Lina’ in great detail in his post, claiming that it will replace generic tardy responses, poor communication and more.
Above all, since switching to AI, Shah reports that he has had 200 live conversations and approximately 1400 support tickets stamped as ‘resolved’ by ‘Lina’.
The CEO then ended the post by sharing his instant gratification, the moment he recognised anyone could make their entrepreneurial aspirations come true overnight going through an AI bot.
What do you think? Did this young CEO make the right choice or will it bite him back one day?
