(News Bulletin 247) – The call center specialist falls heavily on the Paris Stock Exchange, with the market worried about the repercussions on its activity of the rise of Klarna’s AI tool which in one month made the equivalent of 700 full-time equivalents.

New warning shot for Teleperformance on the stock market. The outsourced customer relations specialist plunged 25% late Wednesday morning and its action was suspended for several tens of minutes due to a massive influx of sell orders.

According to a financial intermediary, the call center group’s plunge is linked to several articles reporting the prowess of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed by Swedish fintech Klarna.

In a press release, the Scandinavian company revealed the achievements of its AI assistant, resulting from a partnership with OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT.

Klarna claims that this assistant conducted 2.3 million conversations in one month, representing two-thirds of the company’s customer relations conversations. She also estimates that this assistant did the work of 700 full-time equivalents.

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An additional profit of 40 million dollars

Additionally, this assistant “is on par with human agents when it comes to customer satisfaction rates” and “is more accurate in resolving tasks, which has led to a 25% drop in repeat requests “, explained the Swedish company. Klarna estimates that this assistant should enable it to generate additional profit of $40 million in 2024.

Teleperformance reacted to the stock market panic via a press release issued during the day.

“The Teleperformance stock is today strongly affected following a communication action by a player in the financial sector announcing high automation of its processes in the area of ​​customer relations (chat),” notes the company.

“Teleperformance management indicates that the group’s current activity in no way reflects the negative conclusions that could be drawn from the technological developments mentioned in this communication,” adds the CAC 40 group.

“It also specifies that artificial intelligence is already widely deployed in the solutions offered by Teleperformance, mainly to manage simple processes on behalf of its clients. Furthermore, the group continues to develop R&D programs, on its own. and in partnership with leading technological players in the field, with a view to enriching this integration and thus consolidating its position as a world leader in its market”, develops the company.

Following the company’s communication, Teleperformance shares regained some of the ground lost on the stock market. The stock fell 13.5% around 4 p.m.

Meeting next week

Klarna’s announcements have refueled fears about Teleperformance. Throughout 2023, the group’s stock suffered from market anxieties about the impact of generative artificial intelligence on its business. If the company assures that it will benefit from advances in AI, through increased productivity for example, investors for their part fear an upheaval and some analysts have warned of a risk of increased pressure on the prices of relationship services clients.

“We believe that large-scale automation is likely to result in a turbulent operating environment and strong pricing pressure in the medium term, leading to significantly slower revenue growth and lower profitability for Teleperformance compared to in the last decade”, estimated, for example, Deutsche Bank in October.

Teleperformance will deliver its annual results as well as a strategic update on March 6.