Klarna Customer Service: From AI-First to Human-Hybrid Balance

From 2.3 million AI chats that slashed resolution times from 11 to 2 minutes, to a CEO's surprising pledge that customers can "always speak to a real person", Klarna's customer service journey reads like a Silicon Valley cautionary tale turned redemption story.

In a landscape where financial services can make or break trust with a single interaction, Klarna's bold AI experiment and subsequent course correction offer critical lessons for anyone dealing with money-sensitive customer issues. After all, when it comes to your finances, you need both lightning-fast responses and genuine human empathy.

This guide unpacks how Klarna's support actually works today, where their AI excels and where it stumbles, the best ways to reach a human agent when you need one. We'll draw on everything from OpenAI's case study showcasing those impressive AI results to Bloomberg's coverage of Klarna's human-first pledge, eMarketer's analysis of their AI backtrack, CMSWire's insights on AI taking on more work, and Business Insider's reporting on staff being reassigned to support roles.

How Klarna Support Works Today: The Hybrid Model

Today's Klarna customer service operates on what they call a hybrid model, a carefully orchestrated dance between AI efficiency and human expertise.

The AI Assistant: Your First Line of Support

Klarna's AI assistant, powered by OpenAI technology, serves as the frontline of customer support. Available 24/7 across 23 markets in over 35 languages, this digital agent currently handles approximately two-thirds of all customer chats, roughly 1.3 million conversations per month as of mid-2025. That's equivalent to the work of about 800 full-time employees.

The numbers are impressive: average resolution time has plummeted to around 2 minutes, and the AI has achieved a 25% reduction in repeat contacts. Customers get instant responses at any hour, in their preferred language, without waiting in a queue.

Human Agents: The Empathy Layer

But here's where Klarna's 2025 pivot becomes crucial. The company now offers 24/7 live chat via the app, with seamless handoffs from AI to human agents when needed. They've also implemented a callback option for those who prefer voice support. In a significant strategic shift, Klarna is actively rehiring and replacing outsourced agents to ensure consistent human access, a direct response to quality concerns that emerged from their AI-only approach.

Channels at a Glance

• In-app chat: AI responds first, with smooth transitions to humans when complexity demands it
• Phone support: Available via callback request; US customers can also dial +1 (844) 552-7621 (844-KLARNA1) during business hours
• Complaint portal: For formal escalations through Klarna's website
• Social media: Useful for visibility and DMs, though not recommended for account-specific issues
• Email: Limited to specific requests like privacy concerns, not for general support

The Journey: From Outsourced to AI to Balanced

The Early Years: Traditional Support

In its formative years, Klarna relied on conventional support channels, phone, email, and chat, staffed by approximately 3,000 outsourced agents. The company offered basic self-service options and FAQ sections within the app, but human intervention remained essential for most issues.

2024: The AI Revolution

The game changed dramatically in early 2024 when Klarna launched its OpenAI-powered assistant. The initial results were nothing short of revolutionary: 2.3 million chats in the first month alone, with the bot handling two-thirds of all customer service interactions.

Klarna projected a staggering $40 million profit gain from this efficiency, and remarkably, customer satisfaction scores remained on par with human agents. It seemed like the perfect solution, until cracks began to show.

2025: The Reassessment

By 2025, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted what many customers had been feeling: "Cost was a predominant evaluation factor" in organizing support, resulting in "lower quality." This frank acknowledgment led to a dramatic shift in strategy.

Rather than retreating from AI entirely, Klarna chose evolution. The company began rehiring human agents and bringing work in-house, while simultaneously expanding AI capabilities to handle some level-two queries. As reported by eMarketer, Bloomberg, CMSWire, and Business Insider, this was a maturation of their support strategy.

What the AI Can and Can't Do

Where AI Excels

Klarna's AI assistant shines in several key areas:

• Payment management: Scheduling, extensions, and payment plan adjustments
• Order tracking: Status updates, returns, and refund workflows
• Account updates: Basic profile changes and preference settings
• Policy questions: Clear explanations of terms, conditions, and procedures
• Purchase denials: Now even explains why certain transactions were declined

The Guardrails

Behind the scenes, Klarna has implemented strict whitelisting protocols. The AI retrieves information exclusively from the help center and customer account data, responding in mere seconds while carefully avoiding the "hallucinations" that plague many AI systems. When queries fall outside its scope, it immediately initiates a handoff rather than guessing.

Handoff Triggers

The system recognizes several cues for human escalation:

• Complex dispute resolutions
• Sensitive account access issues
• Unusual edge cases
• Direct requests (customers can simply type "I need a representative” to bypass the AI)

Common Pain Points and Realistic Expectations

Refund Delays: The Waiting Game

One of the most frequent customer complaints involves refund processing. Klarna's policy requires merchant confirmation before releasing funds, which can create frustrating delays. Some transactions also trigger manual review processes, extending wait times further. Customers report waiting weeks or even months for resolution in extreme cases.

Account Access Issues: When Security Becomes a Barrier

Account locks, verification challenges, and fraud checks often create access problems that AI simply can't resolve. These security measures, while necessary, frequently require human intervention to untangle, a process that past understaffing made painfully slow.

Disputes and Edge Cases: The Human Touch Required

While the AI can effectively triage disputes, actual resolution almost always needs human judgment. Past understaffing created significant backlogs here, but Klarna's current staffing ramp-up specifically targets this pain point.

Public Feedback: The Numbers Tell a Story

Klarna maintains a 4.1/5 rating on Trustpilot with notably high response rates to negative reviews. However, the Better Business Bureau shows over 900 complaints in three years, predominantly focused on refunds and billing issues, clear indicators of where the system has struggled.

Competing AI Support Agents

While Klarna navigates its AI journey, other companies are taking different approaches to automated support. Gorgias, the leading helpdesk platform for Shopify merchants, offers an instructive contrast. According to a case study from PromptLayer, Gorgias expects their AI Agent to handle 60% of new customer conversations by the end of 2025 across 6,000+ merchants. What sets them apart is their use of PromptLayer's infrastructure for rapid iteration—their 100-person team made over 10,000+ prompt iterations and thousands more evaluation reports in just months, allowing them to safely deploy updates "10s of times every single day." Unlike Klarna's initial all-in approach that later required correction, Gorgias built in systematic quality controls from day one, using modular prompt architecture and continuous regression testing to ensure their AI improves without sacrificing reliability. Their success suggests that the future of AI customer support isn't just about deploying powerful models, but about building the engineering infrastructure to make those models continuously better.

The Future of Klarna Support

Klarna's journey from traditional support to AI pioneer to balanced hybrid offers a masterclass in customer service evolution. Their system now pairs a fast, multilingual AI for routine tasks with skilled humans for complex, sensitive cases,a model that's still maturing but showing promise.

Use the right channel for your issue and don't hesitate to escalate when needed. Klarna's renewed focus on human support aims to close the gaps that frustrated customers in the past, while their AI continues to improve and expand its capabilities.

As financial services become increasingly digital, Klarna's balanced approach may well become the industry standard, instant automated service when you want it, compassionate human help when you need it. In a world where money matters and you can't afford mistakes, that combination might just be the sweet spot customers have been searching for.