AI in Action: Customer Support and Success Stories - Howard Blick from Freecash
As part of our new “AI in Action: Customer Support and Success Stories” bite-sized interview series, we sat down with Freecash’s Customer Service Team Lead, Howard Blick to talk AI, and learn how he uses it every day to reduce support ticket volumes while ensuring their responses remain human.
Mike is an experienced Product Manager who focuses on all the “non-development” areas of My AskAI, from finance and customer success to product design, copywriting, testing and more.
As part of our new “AI in Action: Customer Support and Success Stories” bite-sized interview series, we sat down withFreecash’s Customer Service Team Lead,Howard Blickto talk AI, and learn how he uses it every day to reduce support ticket volumes while ensuring their responses remain human.
Which AI tools are you using right now?
At the moment, we're using a few different tools to do with AI. Predominantly, our chats are being handled byMy AskAI'schatbot. We also use tools withinGoogle Workspaceand have experimented a bit with Intercom’sFin AI Copilot.
How are you currently using these tools and AI in your role?
We use the AI chatbot for handling the majority of our customer interactions. Within Google Workspace, we utilize AI compose for creating varied responses to avoid sending the same template repeatedly. It's not a frequent use case but comes in handy occasionally. Additionally, we use Intercom’sFin AI Copilotfor managing support interactions that aren’t automatically responded to by our AI chatbot (our AI helps us manage the large volume of chats).
How has using AI changed your role?
My role has significantly evolved with the introduction of AI. When I joined, I was primarily looking after the team. Now, a large part of my job involves buildingcustom answersand reviewing support documents to ensure they are optimized for AI. This has added a new dimension to my role, making it more focused on content accuracy and AI training.
“My role has significantly evolved with the introduction of AI…this has added a new dimension to my role, making it more focused on content accuracy and AI training.”
What do you wish AI could do to help you in your role that it can't currently do?
One area where AI could really help is in quality assurance. Right now, I manually review a random sample of chats to ensure quality and adherence to our standards. It would be beneficial to have AI review more, if not all, interactions for a true reflection of performance. Currently, budget constraints prevent us from implementing this, but it's something we might look at in the future.
For someone in CS who hasn't started using AI at all yet, what advice would you give them?
My advice would be not to feel daunted. There are many products beyond ChatGPT, and you don't need a high level of technical knowledge to implement them. It's super user-friendly and easy to get started. The worst that can happen is you end up learning something new, which is always valuable.
“My advice would be not to feel daunted…worst that can happen is you end up learning something new”
Where or how do you keep up to date with AI developments in CS?
I follow a lot of AI-related content on YouTube and have a Google feed tailored with AI news. LinkedIn is also a valuable resource for me, as it’s filled with relevant articles shared by my professional network. For YouTube, I follow MKBHD, who has a great way of summarizing tech developments.
Mike is an experienced Product Manager who focuses on all the “non-development” areas of My AskAI, from finance and customer success to product design, copywriting, testing and more.