From the engine room
From the engine room
The engine room is the part you don't see from the outside. Not a rebuild manual, but field knowledge from running support day to day: numbers and decisions from real rollouts, my thoughts on what makes support good, and the ambitions for where I want to take it. Less how-to, more perspective and direction.
- Operations70% choose the human: what my Voice rollout says about the Voice hypeThe industry sells Voice AI as replacing the human. When we let callers choose, around 70% chose the human first. Why the freedom to choose is itself the real story.Read →
- PerspectiveThe personalization ladder: from «hello» to AI that reads your releasesPersonalization isn't a switch you flip, it's a staircase, and every step is one more system integration. The steps from the greeting to self-updating AI, why the context belongs to the human at the ticket just as much as to the bot, and the line where possibility turns into responsibility.Read →
- PerspectiveWhat you do with the time the bot frees upMost people stop the moment the bot takes some tickets off the pile. The interesting question comes after: where do you invest the time you gain? On deflection, engagement, and the moment support turns into a relationship channel.Read →
- PerspectiveThe double-edged sword: why mediocre support costs more than good supportSupport doesn't act on referral linearly, but with a threshold and a sign. Why mediocre support is the most expensive tier, what loyalty research says about it, and where the bot stops and the human begins.Read →
- OperationsThe fallback decides, not the normal caseEvery technical failure needs a plan B or an escalation with context. Plus two safety nets that tend to get forgotten: the channel switch, and the statements that can't be left sitting after the conversation ends.Read →
- OperationsWhat «70% resolved autonomously» meansResolution rates are only as good as their definition, and that rarely comes with them. Zendesk's yardstick: 72 hours with no further contact, no human involved. Including the cases where the right answer is no.Read →
- Operations7 AI Agents in 4 Months: what I talked about at Zendesk Showcase MunichFive brands, four languages, three channels, six sprints: the full story behind our AI Agents rollout. Including the numbers we missed, and why that was the right call.Read →