"Did someone drop the ball?" is the wrong question when an escalation slips through the cracks. The right question: "Did we design a system where the ball could be seen at all?" @StacieBairdHX on how automating the routine tickets erodes the instinct to spot the non-routine ones — HX Podcast Episode 2 out now.
Key data points:
- Klarna cut "hundreds" of support roles for AI, saw quality decline, began rehiring1
- CEO admitted "prioritizing cost over experience"1
- Salesforce cut support from ~9,000 to ~5,0002
- CEO said AI handles about half of cases, meaning humans still do the other half2
- Gartner projects 50% of companies that cut support for AI will rehire by 20273
- Visier analysis of 2.4M workers: highest boomerang rate since 2018 (Visier, 2026)4
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Orgvue Survey, 2025 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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Forrester Research, Predictions 2026: The Future of Work ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Robert Half Survey, 2026 (via CNBC) ↩ ↩2
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Careerminds Survey of 600 HR Professionals, 2026 ↩ ↩2
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Harvard Business Review, Executive Survey, 2025 ↩
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Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. AI-Attributed Layoffs, 2026 ↩
Stacie
For more episodes, visit StacieBaird.com.
