PhonePe cuts customer support staff by 60% in 5 years, leverages AI chatbots

PhonePe

PhonePe has reduced its customer support staff by 60 percent over the past five years, from around 1,100 agents to just over 400, while experiencing a 40X surge in transactions between FY18-19 and FY23-24, the fintech major has said in its annual report filed on October 21.

This drastic reduction in staff was achieved through the company's heavy reliance on AI-driven automation, with over 90 percent of customer service issues now being resolved by chatbots.

Despite these cuts, PhonePe has maintained, and even improved, customer satisfaction, as seen by its consistently growing Net Promoter Score (NPS) during the same period.

"Despite significant external challenges over the past five years, including the Zero MDR law and the Covid-19 pandemic, our relentless focus on process automation and unit economics has driven a clear path to profitability," the annual report said.

Also Read: Can Generative AI turn us all into redundant humans?

PhonePe has joined the list of startups now capitalising on the growing demand for voice-based and Indian language conversational AI use cases in India. In fact several enterprise customers as well as mid-size firms are now increasingly asking conversational AI startups to build voice-based customer support assistants.

In FY24, PhonePe reported a significant 73 percent increase in revenue, reaching Rs 5,064 crore, on the back of cost efficiency and product diversification. The firm had clocked Rs 2,914 crore revenue in the previous fiscal.

PhonePe Group has also turned its Adjusted Profit After Tax (PAT) positive, recording Rs 197 crore, a stark improvement from the Rs 738 crore loss reported last year.