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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

#161

Post by shepherdjerred »

ryukoposting wrote: post #90
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…

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.

The issue is that companies will be acquired/cut costs

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

#162

Post by shepherdjerred »

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…

I’ve also really enjoyed Amazons support agent. Sometimes it can be really helpful.

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

#163

Post by theturtletalks »

I don’t understand how viable these helpdesk companies are anymore for non-enterprise customers. We replaced our helpdesk with Hermes. It has long term memory about our business. When a customer messages us, Hermes gets all the relevant details about the customer and creates a Pi session using Gemma 4 running locally and customer talks to that agent. That agent can escalate that issue to Hermes and Hermes can escalate to us.

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

#164

Post by dheera »

s_dev wrote: post #131
dheera wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 psy…

> It's not a psychological trick to make things seem cheaper

Interesting! That makes sense, though Claude seems to think otherwise:

https://claude.ai/share/470906ed-6987-46b3-9e81-facfd44fc863

I feel like cash transactions are pretty rare these days at least in the US, so it would make sense for the psychological trick to persist (perhaps even more so because you don't actually have to hand over $7, you hand over a piece of plastic with your brain thinking it is $6ish)

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

#165

Post by computerfriend »

ArcHound wrote: post #157
anon7000 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a link? Would play.

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

#167

Post by rahimnathwani »

ArcHound wrote: post #157
anon7000 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://papercookies.itch.io/coldline

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

#168

Post by garrickvanburen »

asim wrote: post #57
s_dev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 days ago. No joke. https://www.intercom.com/blog/today-intercom-becomes-fin/

Wow. So a deal like this is not overnight, its 6-12 months in the making at least. So the name change comes as they knew the deal was closing and doubled down on this new branding for customer agents. Maybe because Saleforce wants Salesforce Fin Customer Agent as a product. Who knows. Don't want to read the post...

This was my guess on the impetus for the name change as well.

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

#169

Post by consumer451 »

alpineman wrote: post #64

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

According to public info I see, their last raise was at a valuation of $2B to $2.5B. If that's correct, that's a decent exit, right?

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

#170

Post by ceejayoz »

vanuatu wrote: post #137
ceejayoz wrote: post #96

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. 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

Is this a joke?

https://www.intercom.com/legal/terms-and-policies/additional...

> Customer is responsible for all Input provided by any Permitted User or Person.

> Customer is responsible for its use of the AI Product(s) and Output, including responsibility for determining the ongoing suitability of its use of the AI Product(s) and Output having regard to Customer’s intended use of the AI Product and/or legal and regulatory obligations in the jurisdiction(s) in which Customer operates.

> Output may contain material inaccuracies and may not reflect correct, current or complete information. Do not rely, or encourage others to rely, on any Output without independently evaluating its accuracy and appropriateness of use, including, without limitation, by using human review. Intercom makes no representations or warranties and provides no indemnities with respect to Output. The AI Products and Output are not intended to substitute for the services of properly trained and licensed individuals.

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