IKEA Billy

The best illustration of that difference this season came from a bookcase.

IKEA put an AI agent into customer service and named it Billy after the bookcase.

Billy was good.

It handled close to half of all inquiries.

IKEA could have cut half of its customer service workforce.

Maybe they had a reason to do it, maybe they didn't.

But in most of those conversations it starts with, we want to put AI to deflect calls, as kind of Dave shared with his government story.

The AI was so successful, its name was Billy, named after his most popular bookcase.

So they just stand up in the center and then slither into their beds.

But in the little end of the hallway where that spiral staircase goes up, I have a Billy bookshelf, one of the three shelf Billy bookshelves that's there.

And on the top shelf, I keep the great illustrated classics, the children's series that was mine from when I was a kid.

And then my kids read and I'm saving them for my grandbabies.

And the eye rolling is just like, that is not a garage.

I'm like, it's our garage now.

The Billy bookshelf is a garage.

Two thirds of it is a garage.

If you're getting specific board game shelving and spending oodles and oodles of money to have specifically sized cubbies, that's stupid money.

If you're going to Ikea and picking up a Kallax or picking up a bookshelf, a Billy bookcase that when your gaming hobby disappears, smart money.

I don't see any problem with that.

Yeah, so my note was Kallax is the standard.

We try to tell it in a different way, which is the IKEA story, which is you have like so many companies around the world looking at AI from an efficiency and cost standpoint.

So they introduce an AI chat bot named Billy, named after his most popular bookcase.

And Billy's job was what so many other AI chatbots job is, which is to deflect, take inbound customer service calls and deflect towards self-service or AI powered resolution.

And Billy was so effective that it solved 47 percent of inbounds.

And that is significant.

And any company is gonna look at 47%.

and pay for our ROI, get our ROI from our AI investment.

But instead what they did is they looked at the other 53%.

4-1.

Billy.

Frank-ta.

Malm and Clippin are all furniture products from which company?

I'm reading the whole thing, word for word.

Start with the Billy bookcase.

It's the most widely distributed, which makes it the best candidate for a mass activation trigger.

Every agent has at least one.

Yes, you're quite right.

Five, though.

Herman said four manuals earlier, on the Billy answer.

It's five.

Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

persist.The Billy bookcase has been around since the 1970s.

Its design is as radically simple as its intended purpose: to actually shelf books.

And it's likely you've seen one of these before.

The Billy blends into just about every environment, and because it's so neutral, it's equally likely you don't remember seeing one before.

It's also endlessly customizable or, as IKEA enthusiasts and DIYers would call it, hackable.

This is a Billy, and this is also a Billy, and the Billy sells like crazy.

In 2023, IKEA had sold some 140 million of the shelving units.

We moved recently.

I had five Billy bookcases that I put up 33 years ago, and they all came to this house, and they're all perfectly fine.

Oh, yes.

You don't even notice that they're old.

... you know, um, custom-built bookcases.

I'm glad we didn't 'cause they would've been very expensive.

But no, the Billys are absolutely fine.

I'm really surprised.