Topic
14 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2022
Tom Eggemeyer recalls OpenAI's launch in October 2022 (the ChatGPT release) producing a surge of buzz that shaped his thinking at Zendesk.
“I remember, uh, when OpenAI launched, I think it was October 2022, um, and there was an amazing amount of buzz about it”
2022
In December 2022 Zendesk had about ten AI data scientists and engineers, and Tom Eggemeyer asked them for a roadmap in Lisbon, Portugal.
“I remember this vividly in December 2022 with some of our, uh, lead, um, we had a small group of AI, uh, data scientists and engineers, about 10 of them”
2022
Tom Eggemeyer says he became CEO of Zendesk in December 2022.
“Uh, I just started that month as CEO”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer says some Zendesk customers reach 85-90% AI resolution rates while customers with complex use cases reach only 20-30%.
“There are some of our customers that are getting 85 or 90% resolutions, but there's some customers with more complex use cases that are getting 20 or 30%.”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer previously worked at Genesis, which was entirely on-premises software before becoming a leading cloud contact center provider.
“I worked for a company called Genesis that was 100% prem.”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer says Zendesk A-B tests on the top fifty to hundred use cases show AI agents are usually as accurate or more accurate than human agents.
“usually, an AI agent is as accurate or more accurate than a human agent.”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer says most companies currently analyze only about 1% of customer interactions for quality.
“Right now, most companies are doing, like, 1% of interactions, they're analyzing.”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer expects 10-20% of customer interactions to remain human-led, mainly the most complex ones.
“We still think ten or 20% of interactions are gonna be human-led, and they're gonna be the most complex interactions.”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer describes customer support software pricing as moving from per-seat to per-interaction and now toward outcome-based pricing.
“In the past, it was seats. We still have some seats. Some companies made the twit- uh, the switch to interactions.”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer says an airline using interaction-based pricing would likely have paid about $2 for an AI interaction that failed to rebook his flight.
“they would've gotten charged $2 for an interaction, even though I was more dissatisfied”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer says average handling time for human agents will rise after automation because AI takes the easier cases.
“your average handling time is gonna go way up, okay?”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer says Zendesk handles 4.6 billion resolutions a year, a data set used to post-train its models.
“we do 4.6 billion resolutions a year.”
Undated
Zendesk opened an enterprise license for ChatGPT to its employees, and Tom Eggemeyer says he uses it daily.
“we've opened up like an enterprise license for ChatGPT. I use it every day.”
Undated
Tom Eggemeyer says some of Zendesk's best customers avoid being named as references so competitors will not learn they resolve 70-80% of interactions with AI.
“some of our best customers don't want their name out and don't want the results out”
Episodes