Zendesk Bets Big on AI Before Proving It Works — Didn’t They Learn From Klarna’s Mess?

Firing your employees before you know for certain that AI can do their jobs may not be the best idea. But Zendesk did it anyway — and they just announced it yesterday on October 8, 2025.

The customer service software company is doubling down on artificial intelligence with a new autonomous support agent that supposedly can solve 80% of support issues without any human help. Sounds impressive until you remember that Klarna already tried this exact playbook and had to come crawling back to human workers after their AI experiment went sideways.

Klarna’s Cautionary Tale

Klarna replaced 700 customer service workers with AI-powered systems back in 2024, partnering with OpenAI in an aggressive automation push that claimed their bot could handle 2.3 million conversations and take on 75% of the company’s customer chats within a month of launch. Winssolutions

Entrepreneur The Swedish fintech company bragged loudly about the move, with their CEO talking up how AI could do the work of hundreds of employees. The company eventually shrank its workforce by 40% thanks to AI adoption. Klarna CEO says AI helped company shrink workforce by 40%But then reality hit. Klarna’s CEO admitted his pursuit of cost-cutting through AI…