Over the AI hype yet? Corporations everywhere definitely aren’t, particularly with the latest report that Microsoft saved a whopping half a billion dollars in the last year alone with the technology.
After swapping in AI tools for key business processes including call centers, sales teams, and software engineering, the tech giant saved more than $500 million in its call centers alone, according to an inside scoop citing a senior executive’s internal presentation.
Perhaps coincidentally, Microsoft has been laying off a significant number of workers globally — a round of cuts that saw 9,000 jobs lost in early July is the fifth one this year.
The Report Comes From a Leak
Bloomberg broke the news, which wasn’t announced publically. Instead, Microsoft’s chief commercial officer Judson Althoff made the claims during an internal presentation, according to a “person familar with his remarks.”
According to Althoff, the report says, Microsoft not only saved money, but increased employee and customer satisfaction alike at the same time with its AI call centers.
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Bloomberg added a few more details about the leaked presentation, as well:
“The company is also starting to use AI to handle interactions with smaller customers, Althoff said. This effort is nascent, but already generating tens of millions of dollars, he said.”
Microsoft declined to comment on the report, however.
Microsoft Loves AI
These allegations aren’t surprising: Microsoft has been all-in on AI. The software giant has already invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, as well as another dozen million in the French AI startup Mistral, to name just two forays into the AI business.
Now, we have a specific dollar amount to put to the savings that a huge corporation like Microsoft expects to see from its own AI integration: Over $500 million from its call centers alone.
Savings that high are virtually guaranteed to put a twinkle in the eye of CFOs around the globe at companies large and small.
The question of whether AI can truly live up to the great expectations isn’t as clear-cut, however. Some reports suggest that workers overestimate the value that AI brings to the table. One new randomized trial found experienced open-source developers believed they were 20% faster when using AI tools, but were in fact 19% slower when they accessed AI.
Expect Plenty More AI Call Centers in the Future
With this latest leak, it’s more clear than ever that the financial benefits of AI can quickly add up to dozens of millions saved per year.
Companies that are in the know will likely already be exploring the possibility of replacing their human call center supporting staff with AI-powered alternatives.
That’s bad news for white collar workers, as many of them will likely soon find themselves turning in their call center headsets and joining the thousands that Microsoft alone has laid off in the last six months. We’ve rounded up many noteworthy layoffs across the tech industry in the last three or four years, but it’s still tough to overstate how bad the job market is right now.
It’s good news for corporations around the globe however, and will surely bring a twinkle to the eye of CFOs everywhere — or at least it will for a few quarters, before they start looking for more ways to grow revenue.
