NetherlandsRetail and e-commerce2021 – ongoingIngka Group (IKEA)
Billie AI assistant and retraining of call centre staff as design advisers
IKEA's largest retailer said its AI bot handled 47% of call centre queries while 8,500 agents were retrained as interior design advisers
Problem
Customers called IKEA call centres with routine questions. Ingka wanted to grow remote interior design as a sales channel.
Approach
Ingka launched the Billie bot in 2021 to answer common questions. Since then it has trained 8,500 call centre workers as interior design advisers. Remote design sales reached EUR 1.3 billion in the 2022 financial year, 3.3% of total sales, and Ingka aims to lift that share to 10% by 2028. In June 2023 Ingka's global people and culture manager said the company was not seeing headcount cuts so far.
Results
Takeaway
Ingka paired the bot with a retraining programme and a new sales channel. Its own figures give the share of queries handled and the people retrained, but no cost savings.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Retail and e-commerce
- Business function
- Human resourcesCustomer serviceStrategy and organization
- Innovation type
- Organization and ways of workingBusiness model innovation
- AI technology
- Conversational and voice AI
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
Reuters reports that Ingka trained 8,500 call centre workers as design advisers since 2021 while the Billie bot handled 47% of call centre queries. It gives remote design sales of EUR 1.3 billion (3.3% of total) in FY2022 and the 10% by 2028 target, and quotes Ingka's people and culture manager on headcount.
The HR trade outlet repeats the Reuters figures: 8,500 retrained workers and 47% of queries handled by Billie. It adds the quote from Ingka's Ulrika Biesert that a headcount reduction was not what the company was seeing.
Full details are in the original sources.
