IKEA’s Ingka Group reskilled 8,500 call-centre employees into remote interior design advisors after its Billie chatbot took over first-line customer service, rather than laying the affected staff off, according to Ingka Group’s own newsroom announcement and a CX Today update published August 3, 2026. The reskilling program itself launched in 2021, with the initial results reported in 2023.
Billie resolved 47% of customer enquiries in its first two years and now handles around 74%, according to the figures cited in the reporting. The 8,500 reskilled employees were trained in remote design consultation, room planning, and related sales skills. The resulting remote sales channel generated €1.3 billion in FY22 sales, has grown 15-20% annually since, and reached an estimated €1.25 billion in the most recent fiscal year cited. Ingka’s stated target is for remote sales to reach 10% of total revenue by 2028.
Ulrika Biesèrt, People and Culture Manager at Ingka Group, said at the program’s launch: “We’re committed to strengthening co-workers’ employability in Ingka or elsewhere through lifelong learning and development and reskilling, and to accelerate the creation of new jobs.”
Parag Parekh, Chief Digital Officer for Ingka Group, said at the same time: “This level of personalisation is not only going to continue to improve but will enhance customer satisfaction and increase loyalty overall.”
Separately, Ingka Group and Inter IKEA, the two entities that run the IKEA franchise system, cut roughly 1,650 corporate and Group Functions jobs earlier in 2026: 800 roles in March and a further 850 globally in May. Ingka CEO Juvencio Maeztu said the business had “grown too complex.” Those cuts affected headquarters and corporate functions in Sweden and the Netherlands. Reporting on both the reskilling program and the 2026 layoffs describes the reskilled customer-service-turned-sales workforce as unaffected by the March and May reductions.
