The Ticket: Strategies for getting executive buy-in to adopt AI-first CS
One question I often get from customer service leaders I chat with is, “How do I get buy-in for AI-first customer service from execs and company leadership?”
This week on our customer service podcast, The Ticket, we asked a couple of our wonderful customers and Declan Ivory, Intercom’s own VP of customer service, how they approached it.
TL;DR: Success starts with the story you’re telling. You need to understand how to tap into the exec mindset, “test” your theory, and showcase the results and possibilities on an ongoing basis. Here are a few mic drop moments:
Trial, test, iterate
Every business is different. As Constantina Samara, Head of Support at Synthesia, puts it, “It’s really important that you test and trial AI in the way that will work for your company. Learn from your team and slowly and gradually start rolling it out.”
“Make them part of that journey and bring them into your scoping sessions”
To get your execs and team invested, bring them along from the start. Constantina adds, “Make them part of that journey and bring them into your scoping sessions, get their opinion on how things might work, might not work.”
Take a data-driven approach
Declan advises, “Be able to show really strong metrics around how AI is performing for your business. Give confidence to your execs that the investment will be worthwhile – even down to looking at the resolution rates you’re able to drive with an AI Agent on a regular basis.”
Talk about the cost benefits
“The biggest advice I have is to talk about the cost benefits of it,” says Pat Barlow, Support Lead at Dovetail. “I never wanted us to be stuck in a loop of having more customers, more support reps.”
“We can also do 24/7 support while being cheaper than having one extra human”
As an example, he adds, “Our support reps enjoy what they’re doing because they don’t have to answer all of the random tickets that are a pain to deal with. We can also do 24/7 support while being cheaper than having one extra human.”
If you enjoy our discussion, check out more episodes of our podcast. You can follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice.
