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Conversations with founders, operators and investors who are building the future. Listen to find the stories, ideas, tactics & investments behind the products that will define the future of technology.
https://startupproject.substack.com/
How Decagon Built Human-Level AI Support: Ashwin Sreenivas on customer obsession, early traction, enterprise complexity, and the AI concierge future
Startup Project: Build the future
49 minutes 1 second
1 month ago
How Decagon Built Human-Level AI Support: Ashwin Sreenivas on customer obsession, early traction, enterprise complexity, and the AI concierge future
Unlock the secrets to Decagon AI's $1.5 billion valuation and AI-powered customer support.
Ashwin Sreenivas is the co-founder of Decagon AI, a company revolutionizing enterprise customer support with AI agents. Founded in 2023, Decagon has rapidly grown to a $1.5 billion valuation, automating support workflows for brands like Duolingo and Notion. Ashwin, previously co-founder of Helio (acquired by Scale AI), shares insights into Decagon's product-market fit, secret sauce, and tangible business impact, revealing how AI is transforming customer interaction. If you're curious about the future of AI in enterprise solutions, this episode is a must-listen.
Traditional chatbots relied on rigid decision trees, leading to frustrating customer experiences, but Decagon's AI agents are trained like humans, enabling fluid, natural conversations.
Decagon's AI agents follow Agent Operating Procedures (AOPs), which are similar to human SOPs, and this allows them to handle customer interactions across chat, phone, SMS, and email.
The key is to focus on building AI agents that can follow instructions effectively, allowing businesses to offer personalized customer concierge services and seamless user experiences.
Instead of predicting what customers want, AI should learn customer preferences and remember them, making interactions more seamless and efficient, enhancing overall satisfaction.
What you’ll learn
Understand how Decagon AI is transforming customer support by using AI agents that can handle conversations across various channels.
Learn about Agent Operating Procedures (AOPs) and how they enable AI agents to follow instructions and interact with customers like humans.
Discover how Decagon AI helps businesses expand their support offerings, leading to higher retention and happier customers through increased support access.
Explore the importance of solving customer problems quickly and seamlessly, regardless of whether the interaction is with a human or an AI agent.
See how Decagon AI is expanding beyond customer support to offer customer concierge services, enabling personalized and friction-free interactions.
Learn how focusing on customer needs and building something people will pay for can simplify early-stage company challenges.
Takeaways
Decagon AI's agents use Agent Operating Procedures (AOPs) to mimic human-like interactions, which contrasts with older chatbot tech that relied on rigid decision trees.
Unlike traditional approaches, Decagon AI focuses on creating a single agent adept at following instructions, improving onboarding and iteration for customers.
Training smaller, fine-tuned models can outperform larger models on specific tasks, providing better performance and lower latency for customer interactions.
Customer support is evolving into a brand differentiator, with companies like Amazon and American Express setting the standard for excellent service and customer trust.
By making support more affordable, businesses can reinvest savings into providing more extensive support, leading to higher customer retention and satisfaction.
Early customer acquisition requires manual effort, including networking, cold emailing, and LinkedIn messaging, with a focus on charging for the software from day one.
Concentrating on building solutions that customers are willing to pay for within a short timeframe helps to validate business models and weed out unpromising ideas.
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Conversations with founders, operators and investors who are building the future. Listen to find the stories, ideas, tactics & investments behind the products that will define the future of technology.
https://startupproject.substack.com/
