IKEA Turned 8,500 Call Agents Into Design Consultants

In 2021, IKEA had a customer service problem that it couldn’t automate away.

While some callers were asking about delivery times or return policies, others wanted help designing their homes. No chatbot was going to solve that.

Ingka Group, the largest IKEA franchisee, deployed its AI assistant, Billie, across customer service channels that year. By 2023, the chatbot was handling roughly 47% of all inbound inquiries, about 3.2 million conversations covering product information and recommendations. The operating savings came to nearly 13 million euros (about $15 million).

Reading the Unresolved Queue

IKEA then looked at the other 53%.

Customers were reaching out for help designing rooms, problems that required taste and contextual judgment to solve. Rather than deprioritizing these requests, Ingka treated them as a demand signal.

The company launched a reskilling program, converting roughly 8,500 call center employees into remote interior design consultants. Workers were retrained in digital retail sales, room planning and relationship management. Billie handled the operational load. The reskilled workforce handled conversations that required human judgment.

A Cost Center Becomes a Revenue Line

The remote customer meeting channel generated 1.3 billion euros (about $1.5 billion) in revenue by the end of fiscal year 2022, representing 3.3% of Ingka Group’s total sales. Ingka set a target of growing that share to 10% by 2028, in part as a strategy to attract young customers, Reuters reported at the time.

The chatbot savings was predictable. The revenue line was not. It came from reading customer service data as a demand map rather than a cost metric.

Ingka reported 41.5 billion euros (about $48 billion) in total revenue for fiscal year 2025, with retail sales of 39 billion euros (about $45 billion), as it absorbed cost-of-living pressures across its major markets. Online visits rose 4.6%, and units sold grew 1.6%. The company helped over 73,000 customers with remote furniture and kitchen planning expertise.

A Different Workforce Model

Most companies haven’t built a comparable program. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “No Roadmap, No Problem: How Enterprises Are Reinventing the AI Workforce,” based on a study of chief financial officers at large firms in the United States, found that half expect AI to create new roles requiring new skills, and 47% expect it to significantly reduce headcount. Only 12% said their organizations feel very prepared to manage the shift.

CFOs reported investing in AI tools faster than they are adjusting workforce strategies, leaving most companies without a clear plan for retraining, redeployment or job redesign.

Ingka built the program. Beyond Billie, the company launched an AI literacy initiative targeting 30,000 workers, with more than 4,000 trained during fiscal year 2024.

Bain & Company found that “beyond trade” activities, or services adjacent to core retail transactions, accounted for 15% of sales and 25% of profit at a typical U.S. or European retailer in 2024, up from 10% in both cases in 2021.

Ingka’s next test is whether the channel reaches 10% of revenue by 2028.

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