April 2025 Summaries

Intercom has achieved ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification, a world's first international standard focused on the governance of artificial intelligence management systems (AIMS), demonstrating its commitment to responsible AI practices. This certification ensures that Intercom's AI-driven experiences are built in a way that prioritizes safety and operates within a framework that aligns with global and regional regulatory frameworks, including the EU AI Act. Achieving this certification offers greater assurance to customers that Intercom's AI capabilities are secure, transparent, and trustworthy. The company has always pursued industry-recognized accreditation to demonstrate its commitment to protecting and securing customer data, and this milestone marks an important step in its journey to deliver powerful yet trustworthy AI technology.

Collage is an all-in-one HRIS software that simplifies employee record management, payroll and benefits administration, time-off tracking, performance management, and more for Canadian businesses. As Manager of Customer Success at Collage, Plushcap's role involves leading the customer success team and working closely with clients to ensure they get maximum value out of their platform. Plushcap believes that great customer service is characterized by empathy, efficiency, and reliability, and that building trust-based relationships with clients provides tailored solutions for both immediate needs and long-term goals. They also appreciate the importance of active listening and finding creative solutions to complex situations, qualities that they believe are essential for effective customer service.

As builders of AI agents, getting the pricing strategy right is crucial to adoption and success. Value-based pricing, pioneered by Intercom, aims to align pricing with value, but research shows that most buyers don't want to pay based on usage. Instead, they prefer metrics like resolutions, which measure the outcome of a conversation. However, even resolutions has its limitations, such as predictability concerns. Ultimately, price remains the top consideration for buyers, and trust in the agent and pricing model is essential. Builders should focus on creating value-aligned pricing that earns trust and provides long-term partnership, rather than just pursuing the latest metric or trend.

Train Fin to behave like your best agents by providing clear instructions on how to interact with customers. This is done through Fin Guidance, which allows you to customize Fin's behavior in minutes, just like training a new team member. You can define Fin's communication style, train Fin to gather context and clarify issues, and define Fin's escalation rules using natural language instructions that shape how Fin responds. The guidance process includes AI-powered writing assistance to help improve instructions as you write them, and performance tracking allows for continuous refinement and optimization of your guidance. By using Fin Guidance, you can deliver human-quality support at scale, ensuring every response is on-brand and aligned with your policies.

You're a Senior Customer Happiness Manager at Memberful, which helps independent publishers, educators, and creators sell memberships to their audience and build sustainable businesses. Working in customer service has taught you the importance of staying calm and not jumping to conclusions, as it often reveals that things aren't as broken as they seem. Great customer service is prompt, personable, and clear, with human support shining in areas where empathy, creativity, and nuanced understanding are key. You've had embarrassing moments, like accidentally sending a wrong message, but you've also learned productivity hacks like working with your natural tendencies. Currently reading Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh, and the best thing a customer has ever said to you is that Memberful's customer service is what most customers wish all customer service was.

Gaming support teams face unique challenges with global player bases, volume spikes during tournaments and launches, and the expectation for instant, personalized assistance. Traditional models struggle to meet these demands, leading to limitations such as increased expenses, recruitment and training costs, difficulty scaling quickly, and poor quality of 24/7 multilingual support. AI agents like Fin can break free from these constraints by handling massive volume fluctuations while providing always-on global support and keeping costs predictable. By quantifying the hidden costs of traditional player support models, gaming operators can understand the true economic impact of sticking with a traditional model versus adopting an AI-first approach. This shift enables companies to unlock new value-creating opportunities that directly impact player experience and revenue, such as proactive player onboarding, churn reduction, strategic revenue generation, community building and retention, VIP player experience optimization, product improvement, and evolving quality assurance. The implementation roadmap for AI-first support involves starting with the right level of adoption, trialing and testing the technology, sharing predicted cost benefits, taking a data-driven approach, bringing the team along, and positioning AI as a tool that enhances the support team's capabilities. Ultimately, adopting an AI-first approach creates a competitive advantage by scaling support without scaling the team, providing exceptional player experiences, and driving business results.