So the other day I had what seems to be a common experience these days — a truly awful SaaS customer support experience.
I attempted to cancel a SaaS service we pay for on a month-to-month basis that I hadn’t used in well over a year. It wasn’t easy.
First, the link to cancel did not seem to actually work. It just told me someone from support would contact me. I was able to get live support though — hooray!
But they told me cancellations could not be processed due to “instability in the system”.
They could take our money just fine. But “instability in the system” meant I couldn’t cancel.
Obviously this makes no real sense. But what the CS agent just making this up? Did they believe it? Is this what they were coached to say?
I then asked if I could talk to someone in finance — at 11:32am PST. I was told by the support rep that “finance doesn’t work during those hours.” No? If not then, when?
This is the type of interaction that would be better with an AI on every level. If a human was going to lie and not attempt to solve my problem … at least AI would have be clear on it and done a better job. 🙂
Another example here of a just terrible SDR email from Salesforce … that would be better with a great AI SDR:
The SDR email above/below from Salesforce is just terrible on almost all levels. If you are going to phone it in, you might as well have AI phone it in. It will at least get the email formatting, capitalization, and other elements rights.
Interestingly, Gorgias where SaaStr Fund is the lead investor has seen something similar with its AI agent rolled out across its 20,000 e-commerce stores.
Its AI Agent can’t do it all (although it’s constantly doing better and better). But what it does do, it gets a Top 10% CSAT score for.
The AI Agent is never rated the #1 customer success agent by any customers, but it almost always comes in the top 10%.
That’s likely the future. Yes, AI will augment top humans in sales, support, marketing, etc.
But it may also make the B tier and C tier humans obsolete. No point in a C tier marketing campaign, or a terrible customer support interaction that takes 20 minutes, or a lazy BDR that takes hours to get back to you.
AI can do better than that.
In many cases, the software to replace humans is still early. I haven’t seen a perfect AI SDR yet, and even AI customer support agents, which are the furthest along, are still rapidly evolving. But it won’t be long.
And a related post here:
