AI in Customer Support: Overcoming Skepticism and Reaping Rewards

Created time

Sep 6, 2024 10:15 PM

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There is an AI scepticism amongst company leaders about the quality of AI in production.

Especially in customer-facing areas, like support. They don't feel fully ready to let some AI agent/tool/thing talk or interact directly with your customers, with no human intervention or real-time oversight.

But there are already a decent number of companies using AI agents for support in production. We've seen first-hand, with our own customers who receive 10,000+ tickets/mo, that 75%+ of support tickets can be completely resolved by AI. Importantly, without a drop in satisfaction, e.g. CSAT Intercom and Zendesk have many more case studies.

And the point is the same — companies that have been willing to try AI for customer support have been rewarded handsomely, in the form of significantly improved support agent productivity. But uptake overall is still very low. And I find this incredibly surprising how few companies are using any form of AI for their customer support.

The main concerns I've seen so far:

It's expensive. Intercom and Zendesk have chosen to price AI support at 10x the underlying cost. And since no one is reducing headcounts yet, this additional money has to be found in some already tight budgets.

Concern over quality. Specifically, the AI answering questions incorrectly or making things up.

The reality on the ground, though, shows that these concerns are inflated. And companies are missing out on productivity gains and a better experience for their customers.

The quality, even today, is very good. We're seeing on average of 75% of conversations deflected by AI, with no discernable difference in CSAT scores. Reviewing the AI <> customer conversations, I'm always taken aback at how empathetic and smart the AI agent is at resolving simple or complex questions.

Quality, speed, and cost are all getting better, fast. So AI resolution rates will continue to climb to the high 90%s in the next year or so.

We've chosen to charge 5-10x less than Intercom (as have some of our competitors). So AI support doesn't have to add thousands of dollars extra a month to support budgets.

Even if you assume that AI agents will only be good for 50% of your support tickets, e.g. all Tier 1 requests. Objectively, that's still phenomenal. Half of your support tickets deflected automatically. Leaving your agents to spend their time on more important work, e.g. proactive support, onboarding high-value customers, high-complexity tickets, etc.

We support companies slowly rolling out AI support to build up their confidence. Starting with the AI just drafting responses for agents, then syphoning a portion of tickets for the AI to reply to directly. Before finally, letting the AI handle all new customer support tickets.

I'm very confident that we'll look back in 5 years and be amazed at how much basic customer support human agents did.