AI Is Already Resolving 90% of Customer Service Tickets - and It's Getting Smarter | Shashi Upadhyay, Zendesk

From the public's point of view, this can't happen fast enough. EPO was a revolution. Like, this drudgery that you can outsource to lower cost markets with higher unemployment. But now is that kind of come back to the enterprise because you don't need those big call centers any longer. I really do think that there's a golden age of service ahead of us. I'm very hopeful that'll happen. 90% of problems solve by AI and solve instantaneously anytime of the day. The pace of technology is far, far exceeding the pace of adoption. And the pace of adoption is gated so much more by people working together, how companies run their processes, just how the purchasing cycle works, how the implementation cycle works. Those are, like, laws of physics. They only improve by a factor of 10, never. Can we start by having you introduce yourself? So I'm Shashi Upadhyay. I'm the, I run product and engineering, including AI at Zendesk. Been here for fifteen months. Prior to this, I was, a part of the Google Ads organization, the Ads product organization. I was running all the enterprise, ads products there, for several years. And prior to that, I started a company called Lattice Engines, which was a pioneer in using machine learning and AI for, CRM use cases, so marketing and sales primarily. And that company had been acquired right down and Bradstreet and then taken public in 2019. So I've spent, like, last twenty years of my career on, machine learning and AI as applied to, CRM problems, different stages of the customer journey. And before that, I was trained as a physicist, and I've been a management consultant for a few years. Let's talk about the acquisition. You guys first of all, I think most digital knowledge workers, who are likely, my audience, know who Zendesk is. And you've recently acquired an agentic platform or agentic AI company called Forethought. And you've talked about, how Forethought brings self improving AI into the Zendesk portfolio. I'm most interested in what you mean by self improving. But before we get to that, explain what forethought does, why Zendesk acquired it, how it fits into Zendesk's offerings. Yeah. So let's start from, like, and I'll kinda remind ourselves situate ourselves a little bit in what's happening in the world of service. Right? So, Zendesk was, founded, you know, almost, I think, seventeen years ago, originally as a software as a service company focusing on the customer service problem. And the big innovation that Zendesk made at the time was mainly around, usability. So, like, how do you how do you sort of launch a system very easily that's beautiful, you know, very pleasing to the eyes, and and and a place where, agents human agents would want to spend their whole day in. Right? Hence, the name Zendesk, and and it built on that or a very successful run through public and through COVID. We went, private in 2022, …