Talla Company Blog

For as long as there are businesses with customers, there will be a need for customer service teams -- but what your customer support organization will look like in the future will be heavily influenced by artificial intelligence and software automation.

Case deflection will be far more proactive in the future, as automation software will monitor customer usage of your products and services and detect problems as the happen -- perhaps even before the customer notices a downgrade in service or performance. This automation system will reach out to the customer itself -- via chat, email, autmated voice calling, or contacting their smart-speaker -- to advise on how to solve the problem without needing to search for advice in your FAQs or contact your support team.

Wayfair is an e-commerce company specializing in home goods. A quick glance at their sleek website shows that the shopping experience here is definitely different from that of Amazon or Walmart. Pinterest-esque panels showcase attractive furniture arrangements, allowing you to pick items out visually instead of just searching by a specific item.

Ever since Gmail shook up the free online storage game in 2004 by giving away a then-shocking gigabyte of space, individuals and businesses alike have become "digital hoarders" -- keeping all their old data around in case it becomes useful later -- regardless of the unacknowledged drawbacks of the practice. And while storage has become exponentially cheaper over the last 15 years, the hidden costs of digital hoarding may finally outweigh their benefits.

To take a closer look at how AI is remodeling the landscape of B2B sales, we hear from Stephen Messer, co-founder of Collective[i] on episode 35 of AI at Work. Collective[i] was born out of a trend that Stephen observed in his previous company - LinkShare - a pioneer in the field of performance-based marketing and affiliate links.

Information is critical to the success of any modern business, so it's no surprise that many companies are enticed by enterprise support tools. These tools, however, are often a band-aid to a larger information organization and curation problem -- one that modern automation tools are better disposed to solve than old-fashioned search software.

Support case deflection is the art of empowering your customers to troubleshoot their own support issues without having to actually engage with your customer support teams. While case deflection is inarguably a cost-saving practice, it isn't an optimal experience for your customers. The real goal should be case prevention -- solving your customers' problems before they even need to contact you.

One of the best ways to keep yourself up-to-date on the latest developments in the world of AI and machine learning is a great podcast. Just like the field itself, AI-centric podcasts are continuously developing and diversifying - they’re a great way to learn while commuting, working out, and living your life. We’ve put together a roundup of five podcasts that explore the latest advances through different lenses. We’ll tell you a little bit of background about each one so that you can start to get a sense of which of these highly rated podcasts appeals most to you. 

If you are looking to deploy a chatbot for support and have started to investigate the market for chatbot providers, you've probably been left with your head spinning trying to understand how they are different. Chatbot companies have different ways for building bots (how much is it out of the box ready, vs designed by you?) and different places they can deploy (website, facebook, slack, etc). This post is going to look quickly at the AI, or, in some cases lack of AI, that these bots have. In general you can divide them into one of 3 camps.

Spoiler alert: If you’re not using AI to automate your customer support processes, you’re going to get left behind. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not.  

Today, we’re excited to launch our Customer Assist product to help businesses automate self-serve support by using Talla to answer support tickets directly on their site. With Customer Assist, end customers interact directly with Talla, giving them the power to get immediate, accurate answers to their support inquiries.