November last year, I sent you issue #13 of this newsletter. Then I stopped. No goodbye, no "taking a break" post. Just nothing, for 10 months. Unlucky number to be stuck on.
The honest reason: our team got a lot smaller, we had to layoff a bunch of people because AI changed how we run the company. The newsletter was the first thing I dropped.
I told myself I'd get back to it next week. 44 weeks later, here we are.
WHAT THIS BECOMES
One short email a week, from me. Single story about a team automating a business process, and what actually happened. The parts that worked and the parts that broke.
Real numbers only. If I can't back it up, it doesn't go in.
HERE'S THE KIND OF STORY I MEAN
In February 2024, Klarna announced that its AI assistant was doing the work of 700 customer service agents. 2.3 million conversations in its first month. Resolution time down from 11 minutes to under 2.
Every automation article I saw that year had that slide.
Fifteen months later, Klarna's CEO said they had focused too much on cost, and quality had dropped. Customers were getting generic answers to problems that weren't generic. So Klarna started hiring people again.
They didn't switch the AI off. They brought humans back for the conversations that needed one.
That's the whole game, and it's why this newsletter has the name it does. The hard part of automation was never the automating. It's knowing which part of the process still needs a person.
ONE ASK
Some of you don't remember signing up for this. That's fair. The unsubscribe link is at the bottom, and no hard feelings.
If you want to stay, hit reply and tell me one thing:
What's one process that's still manual today in your company?
One line is plenty. I read every reply, and the best ones become future issues (only with your OK, and without your name unless you want it there).
Rushabh