When faced with 1,000 support emails daily and a 12-person team, StackBlitz integrated Parahelp, an AI support tool. The AI agent handled 90% of tickets automatically, allowing the company to manage hyper-growth without hiring a 50-100 person support team, thus avoiding associated complexity and cost.

Don't fear deploying a specialized, multi-agent customer experience. Even if a customer interacts with several different AI agents, it's superior to being bounced between human agents who lose context. Each AI agent can retain the full conversation history, providing a more coherent and efficient experience.

As businesses deploy multiple AI agents across various platforms, a new operations role will become necessary. This "Agent Manager" will be responsible for ensuring the AI workforce functions correctly—preventing hallucinations, validating data sources, and maintaining agent performance and integration.

Ladder built custom AI tools to handle operational tasks at scale. "Maeve AI" manages 90% of support tickets, while "Ladder Pulse" synthesizes group chats for coaches. This strategy uses AI for leverage, allowing a small team to deliver a high-touch experience without a large headcount.

Prioritize using AI to support human agents internally. A co-pilot model equips agents with instant, accurate information, enabling them to resolve complex issues faster and provide a more natural, less-scripted customer experience.

For companies wondering where to start with AI, target the most labor-intensive, process-driven functions. Customer support is an ideal starting point, as AI can handle repetitive tasks, leading to lower costs, faster response times, and an improved customer experience while freeing up human agents for more complex issues.

Customers don't differentiate between sales and support; they just want answers. AI makes it economically viable to handle both inquiry types through a single point of contact. This resolves the common issue of customers calling sales lines for support issues simply because they know a person will answer.

An IT head with two decades of experience believes AI will fundamentally change IT support. Traditional ITSM, reliant on manual ticketing and workflows, is being replaced by AI agents that can instantly understand intent, map requests to workflows, and fulfill them, collapsing resolution times.

By implementing an AI agent trained on its knowledge base, Castos (a SaaS with 4,000 customers) reduced support tickets by 50%. The system provides instant answers while a crucial "escape hatch" button allows customers to easily reach a human, preventing frustration.