What happened: IKEA deployed an AI chatbot that handled 47% of customer service inquiries. Instead of laying off 8,500 affected workers, they retrained them as interior design consultants.

The result: A brand new $1.4 billion revenue stream—proof that "augment, don't automate" actually works at scale.

Why you care: The biggest AI returns aren't coming from cutting payroll. They're coming from freeing your people to create new value. The question isn't "How do we replace people?" It's "What could our people do if we automated the grunt work?"

Here's something you don't hear every day: a company deployed AI that took over nearly half the work their customer service team was doing, and somehow nobody got fired.

I know. I was skeptical too.

But IKEA actually pulled it off, and the way they did it completely flips the script on how we've been thinking about AI in the workplace. Instead of the usual playbook—automate, cut costs, lay people off—they did something that seemed almost naive: they invested in the people whose jobs were being automated.

The result? A $1.4 billion revenue stream that didn't exist before.

Let me explain how they did it, because there's a real lesson here that goes beyond feel-good corporate PR.

Transform your team’s static training materials into dynamic, engaging video guides with Guidde.

Here’s what you’ll love about Guidde:

1️⃣ Easy to Create: Turn PDFs or manuals into stunning video tutorials with a single click.
2️⃣ Easy to Update: Update video content in seconds to keep your training materials relevant.
3️⃣ Easy to Localize: Generate multilingual guides to ensure accessibility for global teams.

Empower your teammates with interactive learning.

And the best part? The browser extension is 100% free.

Check out Guidde

A few years back, IKEA rolled out an AI chatbot called Billie. Nothing revolutionary about that—plenty of companies have chatbots. But Billie ended up handling 47% of all customer service inquiries. That's a massive chunk of work that previously required humans.

In most companies, this is where the story would get ugly. You'd see the spreadsheets come out, the consultants calculating cost savings per headcount reduction, the carefully worded internal memos about "organizational restructuring."

IKEA went a different direction.

They had 8,500 call center workers who were really good at talking to customers about IKEA products. These people knew the catalog inside and out, understood what customers were struggling with, and had spent years helping people figure out which bookshelf wouldn't collapse under the weight of their ambitions.

Instead of thanking them for their service, IKEA asked a better question: What if we trained these people to do something even more valuable?

So they retrained them. Not as "customer service specialists" with a fancier title doing the same job. They turned them into remote interior design consultants.

Think about that for a second. IKEA already sells furniture. What they created was a service where actual humans help you figure out how to put it all together in a way that doesn't look like a college dorm room. Consultations start at £25, which is cheap enough that regular people can actually afford it, but expensive enough to generate real revenue.

The numbers are kind of staggering. This new service brought in $1.4 billion in its first full year. That's not just impressive—it's about 3.3% of IKEA's total sales in 2022. And they're not treating this like a lucky accident. The company's goal is to grow this channel to 10% of total revenue by 2028.

I've read a lot of AI case studies that sound impressive until you dig into them and realize they're either exaggerated, unsustainable, or quietly resulted in a bunch of people losing their jobs. This one's different.

What IKEA figured out is something most companies miss: AI isn't valuable because it replaces expensive humans with cheap robots. It's valuable when it frees humans to do things that are actually worth more.

A chatbot answering "Where is my order?" is efficient. A human helping you redesign your living room so it doesn't look like sad beige sadness? That's something people will pay for.

The really smart part wasn't the technology. It was recognizing that their call center workers already had the foundation for this new role. They understood IKEA's products, they knew how to talk to customers, and they'd spent years troubleshooting real-world problems. IKEA just needed to add design training on top of that existing expertise.

This wasn't charity. This was good business. Customer service is typically a cost center—something you have to do but doesn't directly make money. IKEA turned it into a profit center.

Here's what makes this story even more interesting: Billie wasn't some isolated experiment. IKEA's been methodically building an AI strategy for years, and it's all following the same philosophy.

Back in 2019, before Billie even existed, they established a Digital Ethics Policy. They set clear boundaries—no AI for surveillance, no biased hiring algorithms. They built trust before deploying anything controversial.

In 2020, they acquired an AI imaging startup called Geomagical Labs to build IKEA Kreativ, which lets you scan your room with your phone and virtually place furniture in it. It's the kind of thing that sounds gimmicky until you realize it's solving a real problem: nobody wants to buy a couch that doesn't fit.

They've also deployed AI for demand forecasting, analyzing over 200 data sources per product—everything from local weather patterns to payday cycles—to figure out what to stock where. Less "sorry, that's out of stock" equals happier customers.

And they're not keeping this knowledge locked up in the C-suite. IKEA has a goal to train 70,000 employees in AI literacy by 2026. That's not "here's how to use the new software" training. That's teaching people across the company how this technology works so they can think creatively about how to use it.

All of this adds up to something bigger than just a chatbot success story. It's a company that looked at AI and asked, "How do we make our people more capable?" instead of "How do we need fewer people?"

The principle scales, regardless of your company size. Here's how to apply the IKEA playbook:

Your time is your only inventory. The question is simple: What are you doing that's repetitive and low-value?

Invoicing? Scheduling? First-draft email responses? Social media posting? That's what AI should handle. Your time is better spent on the work that actually requires your brain: client strategy, relationship building, creative problem-solving, business development.

The ROI: If you bill $150/hour and spend 10 hours a week on administrative tasks, that's $78,000 in annual opportunity cost. Automate that work for $50/month in AI tools, and suddenly you have 520 hours to sell or invest in growing your business.

You don't need IKEA's budget to apply this thinking. Use a chatbot for basic customer questions (order status, hours, FAQs), then free up your team to do higher-touch work that actually drives revenue.

A small e-commerce shop could automate order tracking and use that saved time to offer personalized styling consultations. A local service business could automate scheduling and redirect that team member to upselling existing clients or building referral partnerships.

The ROI: If AI saves each team member 5 hours per week, that's 260 hours per employee per year. The question isn't "how much did we save?"—it's "what new revenue can we generate with that capacity?"

The IKEA model is proof that the real ROI isn't in headcount reduction—it's in revenue creation. Stop piloting AI in isolated silos. Instead, identify a cost center (customer service, IT support, HR operations) and ask: "How can we turn this into a profit center?"

This requires a strategic commitment to reskilling, workflow redesign, and measuring success in terms of revenue growth, not just cost savings. Make your people the heroes of your AI story, not the casualties.

The ROI: IKEA's interior design service generated $1.4B—about 10x what they likely saved by automating customer service inquiries. That's the difference between optimizing for cost reduction versus optimizing for growth.

Here's the uncomfortable truth most consultants won't tell you: If your AI strategy is primarily about reducing headcount, you're thinking too small.

IKEA's success wasn't about the technology. It was about looking at 8,500 workers and seeing potential instead of redundancy. It was about building a new business instead of just optimizing an old one.

The companies that win with AI won't be the ones that automated the most jobs. They'll be the ones that figured out how to make their people more valuable. There's apparently $1.4 billion worth of difference between those two approaches.

But before you go: Are you currently using AI to replace work or to create new value? If you've automated something in your business, what did you do with the time/capacity you freed up?

Hit reply and let me know. I read every response.

Keep reading and learning and, LEAD the AI Revolution 💪

Hashi & The Context Window Team!