This blog is a Fireside Chat Recap from our conversation with Declan Ivory, VP of Support at Intercom.
Customer Support Operations, often referred to as CS Ops or CX Ops, is undergoing a renaissance. Marketing Ops and Revenue Ops became well-known functions within SaaS. The same thing is now happening with Support Ops.
What’s driving this demand? Much of it is rooted in the directive from leaders top down to understand their customer experience, adopt AI and embrace Support as a competitive advantage.
Smarter, AI Agents for Support Operations are Here
In years prior, the Support Ops team had several tasks. They analyzed data and evaluated areas of opportunity. They also identified tooling and workflows. Finally, they managed capacity planning and presented data to the company.
The only trouble with this model is that it was always limited, lagging and required a ton of manual work.
Tasks and functions in Support Operations are now changing quickly—at lightning speed. Declan Ivory, VP of Support at Intercom, has a front row seat to this evolution taking place. With one look at the Intercom blog on why you need a customer support operations team, it’s clear that AI is transforming Support Operations by providing:
- Real-time data analysis and insights
- Increased agent productivity
- Personalized support,
- Improved customer retention and loyalty, we could go on and on.
This function is changing so fast that Intercom recently launched a Support Operations User Group within their community.
We want to help Support and CX leaders navigate this next frontier. It is being transformed by AI’s ability to predict and extract insights. AI can deliver these insights across teams in seconds. We hosted Declan in our recent Fireside Chat. He delivered relevant food for thought and his own expertise. He covered Support Ops’ most pressing use cases (spoiler alert–you’ll hear about Auto QA).
In this blog post, we highlight Declan’s top 3 takeaways. Here is the link to the full session if you’d like to view the entire recap.
Takeaway #1: Support Can Now Shift Their Reputation From Cost Center to Strategic Powerhouse
The line between Support, Success and retention impact has drastically blurred this past 12 months. With the right data at the forefront, executives are taking notice. With quality scores, agent performance, and sentiment analysis, they understand Support’s impact. They see its direct impact on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and NRR.
In their 2024 Customer Service Trends report, Intercom pointed this out under the 3R’s of AI-Driven Support Operations: reputation, retention, revenue.
As Declan shared during the Fireside chat, “With conversational intelligence and AI for Support Ops, Support can now be looked at as a value center. It directly impacts the strategy of the business.” Hear more on this below.
“There were a very limited set of metrics in the past,” Declan also reminded us. To help leaders understand how Support and CX should be measured moving forward, check out TheLoops guide. It features Ben Saitz, CCO of Netskope, Sarah Hatter of ElevateCX, Genady Rashkovan, Vice President of Global Support at Tricentis and more.
Takeaway #2: AI Agents for Support Operations Helps Teams Access Data At Scale In Real-Time
Historically, companies could only assess a certain amount of Support interactions. Passing feedback to other teams had significant limitations. Someone had to read and analyze every ticket. They would convey this data in a spreadsheet or report. Then they had to schedule time to review it with other teams weeks later.
Now, as Declan pointed out, the world is changing. We’re moving from a world with limited insight into the customer experience. Now, using AI, you can mine every single conversation. You can analyze every interaction you have with a customer. You can marry it with information from other business systems. And you can begin to get really valuable insights.”
You can accurately assess if you are delivering for your customers. AI can also help you make changes as a Support leader. This includes coaching and training. It also allows you to be a viable voice of the customer.
Takeaway #3: The Most Exciting Use Cases Of AI-Driven Support Operations Include Auto QA
One of the key themes that emerged during this Fireside chat is that Declan cannot imagine a world in which his team, or any Support team for that matter, is not using AI. (For what its worth, Declan has worked within this sector for 30 years at notable companies such as Intercom, Google, Amazon (AWS) and IBM).
As it stands today, Declan sees Auto QA, also known as Automated Quality Assurance AI Agents, as one of the most exciting areas for Support Operations–one he anticipates more and more teams adopting these next 6-9 months.
Listen to what he has to say on Auto QA for agents and chatbots, too.
Conclusion: Embracing the AI-Powered Future of Real-Time Conversational Intelligence
These clips and takeaways are but a glimpse of the wisdom Declan and Somya, our CEO, shared with Fireside chat attendees.
Declan even discussed how the Intercom team leverages TheLoops. They use it for their own conversational intelligence. And for data-driven collaboration with their Product team. To hear this example and watch more of the Fireside chat, click here.
To learn how TheLoops can help you and your team, book a demo here.
