Episode description

AI customer service agents are quickly replacing the often clunky AI chatbots of years past, and revolutionizing how we all interact with customer service. In this episode, we dive into this rapid transformation with Mike Murchison, CEO of Ada, a fast-growing leader in the space.

Mike shares how harnessing the power of several Generative AI models enables Ada to automate up to 83% of customer interactions, providing a seamless and empathetic service that rivals, and will soon surpass, human agents. We explore the challenges and triumphs of deploying AI in customer service in this new era, from the intricacies of model orchestration to the importance of resolution and empathy. Mike also teases the future of agentic AI in the enterprise, where AI agents collaborate across departments to innovate and improve products.

Ada

Website - https://www.ada.cx

X/Twitter - https://x.com/ada_cx

Mike Murchison

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemurchison

X/Twitter - https://x.com/mimurchison

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(02:27) Why is customer service a perfect use case for AI?

(03:36) Why didn’t foundation models replace AI “thin wrappers” out of the box?

(05:27) What is Ada?

(10:41) Reasoning engine, model orchestration, instruction following, routing

(15:45) Hybrid systems, finetuning, customization

(18:28) Prompt engineering, observability, self-improvement

(22:07) RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and AI as a judge

(23:06) Guardrails and security

(24:33) Should we expect perfection from AI?

(26:14) Measuring “resolution”

(29:29) What actions can Ada AI Agents take?

(32:12) Authentication and personalization

(35:09) Handoff vs human delegation

(38:12) ACX (AI Customer Experience) and the future of customer service professionals

(42:13) Leveraging analytics and customer support data

(45:54) AI agents for cross-selling and upselling

(48:25) Traditional AI chatbots vs the new generation of AI Agents

(51:24) Emotion, empathy, personality

(54:56) Transparency and AI improvement

(57:58) Managing AI: the measure-coach-improve loop

(1:00:15) Ada Voice and Email

(1:06:25) Future predictions for AI

(1:07:56) Multi-agent collaboration