Billie Some Mates

One interesting aspect of AI use is it’s always framed as a cost-saving.

How can we use it to save money on humans?

But that’s not the only way that AI can benefit.

IKEA have an AI bot called Billie, named after their most popular item, and from 2021 to 2023 it resolved 47% of customer inquiries.

Which probably would have been enough for other companies to lay off their staff.

Rather than lay them off, they looked at what the 53% of calls that weren’t solved by AI were based on, and they were all interior design - for the home, office etc.

So they retrained the humans that were previously doing the customer service facing job, in interior design - and generated $1.3 billion , 3.3% of total sales

By putting humans somewhere else where they were most likely to benefit the company.

Most people think about AI and think,

‘What can it do for me’

or

‘How will it replace me’

Rather than thinking,

‘What can I get it to do that would free me up to do more impactful things?