The $90 billion race to supercharge customer service with AI
The customer service software industry is both large and uniquely ripe for AI disruption. Australian startups like Brainfish are hoping to do just that.
For the first year of its existence, Sydney startup Brainfish focused on answering a single question: How can AI be used to make online self-service both faster and better?
The solution Brainfish developed will be familiar to anyone who has used ChatGPT or similar AI-powered chatbot solutions. Now in its second year, the startup is moving to the next level. Brainfish’s current objective is to solve customer problems directly, so they don’t need to talk to an agent at all.
“We want to be looking at the actual behaviour of the user, anticipating when they’re going to need help, and suggesting to them what they should be doing,” said co-founder and CEO Daniel Kimber, an alumnus of SiteMinder and Me&U.
Take the example of Smokeball, a SaaS platform for small and medium-sized law firms. At first, Brainfish’s software acted as a chatbot that could answer customer questions. Now, it has grown to something more like a customer success manager, guiding Smokeball’s users with notifications and recommendations on how to better use the platform.
