Interactive AI Avatar of CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski shortens feedback loops from months to minutes—trained directly on Sebastian’s insights and experiences.
Klarna, the AI-powered payments and commerce network, launched an AI-powered CEO hotline, enabling its 100 million global consumers to provide direct product feedback in a one-to-one conversation with an interactive AI avatar trained on Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s real voice, insights and experiences.
Initially rolling out in the United States and Sweden, the hotline leverages state-of-the-art AI software solutions to engage conversationally with consumers, identifying key insights and recommended actions in real-time. Customers, including consumers and merchants alike, can speak to it about product features, issues and suggestions for improvements. ‘AI Sebastian’ can also answer questions about Klarna’s vision and mission, and speak about its founding story and journey so far, based on learnings from ‘real life Sebastian’.
(real) Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder of Klarna:
“For decades, customer feedback has been a dull, tedious exercise with filling out forms, rating experiences on arbitrary scales, and completing surveys no one ever reads. We’re changing that. Our new approach transforms feedback into a natural, real-time conversation that’s both engaging for customers and actionable for our teams. Now, customers can simply speak their minds, and their insights are delivered to the right people internally in real time, for them to fix.„
Each conversation generates an instant transcript and concise summary, automatically analyzed by a large language model (LLM), populating an internal live feed and innovation dashboard. Klarna’s product and engineering teams then review these actionable insights immediately, assigning priority tasks. Depending on the issue, consumers’ suggestions raised today could translate into tangible product improvements already the following day.
In contrast, traditional banks typically rely on standardized surveys such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), fixed questionnaires and open ended questions that offer very little engagement and incentive for consumers, thereby generating low response rates and limited actionable insights. This process can take months before feedback is even assessed, let alone implemented, leaving customers disconnected and innovation sluggish.
Klarna’s new approach boldly challenges the conventional wisdom of innovation. Steve Jobs famously claimed consumers “don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” and Henry Ford similarly joked that his customers would have asked for “faster horses.” Yet many of the most successful recent innovations—including Amazon Prime and Netflix Offline Viewing—originated directly from customer feedback and demands.
The AI CEO Hotline builds on Klarna’s proven track record in leveraging AI to enhance operational efficiency and customer experience:
. Klarna’s existing AI-powered chatbot manages approximately 1,3 million customer interactions per month—equivalent to the workload of 800 full-time human agents (up from 700 at launch a year ago)—reducing repeat inquiries by 25% and lowering average resolution times from 12 minutes to under 2 minutes.
. Siemiatkowski recently announced Klarna has streamlined its technology infrastructure by removing over 1,200 external SaaS providers in favor of an internally-built unified tech stack optimized specifically for AI-driven productivity.
. Klarna’s revenue per employee has surged by 152% since embracing AI-driven efficiencies, reaching nearly $1 million per employee annually.
The AI CEO Hotline is available immediately to Klarna consumers via dedicated phone numbers in the U.S. (+14246675385) and Sweden (+46852512594), accessible in English and Swedish respectively, and will be prominently promoted via Klarna’s website, mobile app, and direct customer communication channels. Calls to the hotline are free of charge, with additional markets planned for rollout later this year.
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