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

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

#151

Post by vanuatu »

carlosjobim wrote: post #147
vanuatu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would you need an agent for that? They need to look at a database or some rules to make their decisions anyway, so why not make a normal system to let the customer self-serve?

An agent is self serve. Even better because they can disambiguate intent at the top level

The average person gets frustrated with finding instructions and forms, they just wanna say “give me a refund” and an agent can execute it autonomously

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

#152

Post by cucumber3732842 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #96
thepasch wrote: post #78

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.

Or it's a conscious decision. Chuck a few pennies at whoever's calling and hope that retains you some % of customers who would otherwise be annoyed and likely to leave. The support call queue isn't exactly a pool of median customers.

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

#153

Post by spwa4 »

aurareturn wrote: post #120
spwa4 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see absolutely zero value in something like Fin. The value, of course, is that there is a website with a chatbox that some MBA can type in "never give any refunds anymore for any reason", and it just updates the AI support agent and sends an automated "I deserve a promotion and a raise" to their boss.

Yes. I agree. When I look at Fin's home page and marketing, I think to myself that this stuff can mostly just be text documentation given to an LLM. It's a tool built for MBAs but most of the work is done by a software engineer to give Fin that context in the first place. So all Fin is is a UI on top of the context engineering done by a software engineer who integrated with Fin. It's extremely easy to duplicate Fin's…

Well, it's a few weeks of work, systems integration, and you'll need an SRE too if you're hoping to run it on any scale. But yes, I agree.

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

#154

Post by vanuatu »

aaron425 wrote: post #150
vanuatu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 its surprising to HN tech crowd but a well implemented support agent gets higher reviews and successful resolutions than humans

Can you cite a source or study for your assertion?

personal info

maybe will be public soon with earnings calls? We’ll see!

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

#155

Post by Ecstatify »

janderson215 wrote: post #99

I see a lot of negativity in regards to using AI as a customer service agent. I have only spoken with 1 and that was calling Starlink customer support. It was easily better than 95% of customer support experiences I’ve had. My guess is the bad experiences have to do with bad execution. I’m sure some companies think they can just plug in AI and their job is done. Obviously that is wrong, but done right, the experience…

[dead]

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

#156

Post by ttul »

Congratulations to the Intercom founders. This is a great result for them and the early backers of the company, for a product that I feel was executed brilliantly. We can criticize the usual enterprise-sales-y trajectory and enshittification that ensued after the brilliant opening moves, but at the end of the day, I think Fin reached a solid ending (no pun intended).

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

#157

Post by ArcHound »

anon7000 wrote: post #130
ryukoposting wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Phone menu labyrinth is worse than chatbot in some cases. Depends on the phone menu and the chatbot.

I saw a game, where you played as a poor Soviet soldier that accidentally sent nukes to USA. To save the world, you had to navigate a phone call labyrinth to alert USA defense systems for missile interception. I haven't laughed that much in a hot minute.

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

#158

Post by christoff12 »

aurareturn wrote: post #144
DoingSomeThings wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you've done this yourself. I'm honestly jealous if solving customer support was as easy as your describe. In my case, I've spent the past 12 months running implementations at multiple companies. I've engaged directly with smart engineering teams to assist. It was not that easy. What you outlined might work for a simple ecom business. It probably does 95% of the job for a simple case where you're delivering info…

But it will fail the second it needs to take action or deliver personalized information based on client's account data. And why would Fin be better here? It's very easy to give your agent context on the customer. In 2026, every time I've tried to build a custom tool to replace a SaaS, I've succeeded. The biggest problem with SaaS is that they build a one size fits all. When you build a custom tool, you control everyt…

Many, many people do not have the capacity to build and maintain custom solutions (whether in-house skills, or simply bandwidth) and therefore outsource to vendors.

It's an incredibly common aspect of business. Enterprise level contracts often include the sort of white glove service to help fill in these sort of gaps. On simpler plans, having the tooling provided frees up just enough capacity to handle the exceptions to keep the process running smoothly (since one doesn't have to build and run simultaneously).

Sometimes people want to minimize the hassle with stuff. It's why car washes and oil change places and coffee shops exist.

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

#160

Post by codessta »

jt2190 wrote: post #111
twodave wrote: 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…

Counterpoint: I’ve had recent support calls with two large corporations, both with humans. In both cases the humans lied about what could be done to address my issue. In one case I was literally repeating back to the human what I’d just been told, and getting them to confirm that what I said was correct. First bill arrives and I find out the truth. Second case I was told I’d have to cancel and create a new account to…

Agreed, I've had humans hallucinate stuff more often than Agents so far in support calls. Many of the customer support agents are just incentives to get you off the phone as fast as possible, and they'll absolutely make stuff up to get you to give up on your quest.
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