Meesho Unveils AI Bot To Reduce Customer Support Cost By 75 Per Cent

The bot, supporting both Hindi and English, manages 60,000 calls daily on a 24x7 basis, aiming at reducing call costs by 75 per cent. The company mentioned that its customer support team is being trained to handle more complex calls

Mahima Sinha

Updated on: 26 November 2024 4:07 pm

Meesho Unveils AI Bot To Reduce Customer Support Cost By 75 Per Cent

SoftBank-backed e-commerce platform Meesho has launched an AI-powered voice bot for customer support which would reduce the cost of dealing with users' queries by 75 per cent, according to the company.

The start-up that claims to serve 160 million customers across India, announced that its AI bot, launched a month ago now handles 60,000 customer calls daily in both English and Hindi. The turnaround time for each query is expected to be reduced by half, from approximately 3-4 minutes to just 1.5-2 minutes.

Meesho plans to enhance the bot’s functionality by adding six more Indian languages, including Gujarati, Bangla, Marathi, and other regional languages, to better serve its customer base, which is primarily located in Tier 3 and 4 cities.

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With approximately 45 per cent of Meesho's sales coming from Tier 3 and 4 cities, the voice bot was designed to function effectively on basic smartphones and in noisy environments. Although the company has not disclosed specific data on customer query cost savings due to the ongoing scaling of the model, Meesho stated that the tool has already reduced costs by 75 per cent and increased customer satisfaction by 100 per cent.

Speaking about the potential threat to the existing customer support workforce from the chat bot, co-founder and chief technology officer Sanjeev Barnwal stated that the workforce will be deployed for more complex customer issues and seller support

The launch comes as e-commerce companies increasingly turn to artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI to reduce costs and streamline operations. Earlier this year, Amazon introduced Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant in India, to enhance the customer experience.

In October, Meesho reported a 97 per cent reduction in its adjusted losses, narrowing from Rs 1,569 crore in FY23 to Rs 53 crore in FY24, driven by a decrease in general and administrative expenses. The company’s revenue from operations rose by 33 per cent, reaching Rs 7,615 crore in FY24, up from Rs 5,735 crore in FY23.