Atlassian has laid off 200 European customer service and support workers in addition to the 150 cut in July who were told that they would largely be replaced with AI. That brings the total to 350 — a number the company confirmed Tuesday.
“Earlier this year, we made the hard decision to let a small cohort of customer service and support (CSS) employees go,” an Atlassian spokesperson told CX Dive in an email.
The company came to the decision after customer experience improvements to its platform and tools reduced support needs. “While we’re proud of this momentum, it leaves us with more capacity than needed to deliver strong customer support,” the spokesperson said.
The software company is not the only one to lay off customer service workers recently. Klarna said its AI chatbot could do the work of 700 full-time agents and slashed its workforce in 2024. Salesforce laid off about 4,000 agents, CEO Mark Benioff said last month.
But rather than indicating a trend of customer service workers losing their jobs to AI, layoffs like these are outliers, according to Max Ball, principal analyst at Forrester. While these companies may be on the cutting edge of deploying the technology, they “haven't quite figured this all out yet,” he told CX Dive.
Klarna, for example, began rehiring customer service employees earlier this year.
Atlassian made headlines earlier this summer when its CEO left a recorded message for employees telling them customer service issues would be largely addressed with AI, The Australian reported at the time.
But the Atlassian spokesperson said some human agents would remain.
“These improvements include reducing the time spent on support tickets with more efficient ways to route work to the right experts who can resolve issues more quickly, better identification and resolution of error codes, and more,” the spokesperson said. “These roles are not being replaced by AI.”
Though there aren’t enough companies replacing workers with AI for it to indicate a trend yet, any layoffs in contact centers are notable, as nearly one-third of workers quit every year, Bell said.
“I don't know what their turnover rate is, but the average is 30%, so you very rarely lay people off in the contact center,” he said. “You just let them quit.”
AI will eventually disrupt the contact center workforce, but the technology isn’t there yet, he said.
Generative AI will be a game changer for self service if done right, according to Ball. But companies would do well to keep customers at the forefront of their efforts.
“There's been a long history of brands chasing ROI at the expense of the customer experience,” Ball said. “The guys who are going to succeed are the ones who do it in a way that's much better for their customers, instead of just chasing the money.”
The impacted workers were in France and the Netherlands, and Atlassian engaged in works councils in both countries, “which accounts for the delay in notice for the European-based employees who were impacted,” the spokesperson said.
