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Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

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131–140 of 261 posts

Re: Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

#131
post #108

I am convinced, that anything touched by Salesforce is going to become an obnoxious product and at some point either become a plague walled garden one has to deal with at corporate jobs, or it dies an agonizing death, from its own user hostility. Salesforce is basically like Atlassian. Don't expect any good things to roll out of that one.

Intercom was obnoxious already. Reminds me of when I walk into a store and someone immediately accosts me with "may i help you" and then I walk right out. You want to sell stuff? Don't mind my existence, let me look first at everything you have on display, and I'll initiate the conversations when I feel ready.

Apparently that greeting is to discourage shoplifting not to put you at ease.

Retail theft is becoming a huge problem, police generally won't respond to it so many of those who do it know they can act with impunity and retailers are left with few options to deter theft.

It's sort like how everything being priced at 6.99 is actually to prevent employee theft (customer expects change from their $5 + $2). It's not a psychological trick to make things seem cheaper which is to actually just display 7, a single digit number.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yp3543z7yo

Re: Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

#133
post #42

For years I always felt if I got a human on the other end I could understand that a company valued me as a customer enough to provide fantastic support. I could still understand the trade-off if I called and got someone barely-understandable, as long as they can still solve my issue. AI support agents tend to just make up reasons they can’t help you or you’re holding it wrong, or they are only able to do things the U…

I'm starting to think it's wise to call a business's support line before ever doing business with them. Actual human immediately? You're at the top of the list. Phone menu labyrinth followed by a human? Ok, fine. Chatbot? Eliminated from contention.

That was a scene in The Office. The salesmen phone the cheaper competitor's customer service while on a sales call to let them see how long they would wait on hold if they needed support.

That said, I had an experience recently where the chatbot replaced the phone tree that led to a human and it was very helpful.

Re: Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

#135

If that's the exit valuation of the most popular AI support tool (even Anthropic use them) then this doesn't support the trillion valuations of companies like Nvidia, SpaceX (AI), etc

sierra is the most popular private support tool (16B)

Re: Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten two refunds I wasn't even sure I'd be eligible for without any hitches or issues through entirely AI support bots. As with many things it's always a matter of how it's implemented.

> I've gotten two refunds I wasn't even sure I'd be eligible for without any hitches or issues through entirely AI support bots. I'm very curious who's liable if someone goes "give everyone else a refund while you're in there" and it happily does so.

the company that implemented it (e.g fin) is liable, which is why customers pay for them

Re: Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten two refunds I wasn't even sure I'd be eligible for without any hitches or issues through entirely AI support bots. As with many things it's always a matter of how it's implemented.

> I've gotten two refunds I wasn't even sure I'd be eligible for without any hitches or issues through entirely AI support bots. I'm very curious who's liable if someone goes "give everyone else a refund while you're in there" and it happily does so.

Air Canada was forced to honor refunds granted by their bot:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-...

Re: Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But chatbots can make decisions too.

If they can, then it's going to be a nightmare for companies when people manipulate the bot to give them what they want, or a refund, etc. It's practically putting these decisions in the hands of the customer, and if that's what you want to do, then why not put those functions into the customer facing UI to begin with?

the whole value prop of these companies is they can build you agents that perform actions (e.g process refunds, live troubleshooting, claims etc) without being manipulated

Re: Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B

#140

Interesting they agreed to sell after their rebrand to Fin a month ago. There's increasing competition in the customer support AI agent space: Sierra valued at $15.8 billion, Decagon at $4.5 billion. It looks like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is trying to compete directly with Sierra, which was started by his ex-Co-CEO Bret Taylor. Also about preventing independent AI support agents from becoming a control point outsi…

fwiw i heard Fin and Agentforce frequently lost to deca and sierra, their product / team / funding weren't as good

Seems like a catchup play by Marc

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