The Button that's Worth $20,000 per Month

Resolve Systems is an interesting company who's business is literally automation using business process workflow automation. They have an incredibly interesting customer base, including companies such as Deutsche Telekom and Virgin Media.

Resolve have roughly 70 employees. 15 of these are working full time with customer support. One month after implementing our chatbot they see a drop in support tickets by 30%. This implies that our AI chatbot is literally doing the job of 5 full time employees, possibly saving Resolve Systems as much as $20,000 per month!

Below is a direct quote from John Gorham their VP of Software Development. Notice, I want to emphasize that we're not even done with our implementation. Once the project is finished, we aim for an 80% reduction.

"We've seen a 30% decrease in tickets and escalations over the last month in Express"
John Gorham, VP of Software Development at Resolve Systems

Actions Express being one of their products our chatbot is now answering questions about.

Increased quality

According to a study conducted 6 months ago a support technician with access to an AI chatbot can within 72 hours of being hired outperform a senior support technician on quality having worked at the same company for more than 9 months. Another study by IBM shows us how 69% of users prefers talking to an AI chatbot instead of a human because they get instant replies.

Resolve Systems's AI chatbot answers roughly one question every 20 minutes on average. Most of these questions wouldn't be elevated into support tickets because most of the time people need help, they won't ask for help, because the process is too rigid. To understand why, realise that most traditional ticket systems have complex recipes for how to create a ticket such as.

Describe your problem
What was your expected behaviour
What was your actual behaviour
What steps did you apply resulting in the problem
Etc, etc, etc ...

Before I'm even half way through the above list, I've already given up. The process is simply too complex. With our AI chatbots users can just copy and paste an error message into the chatbot, and 98% of the times the AI chatbot will provide a solution within 30 seconds! Having to wait for a support technician to provide me with the same answer typically takes hours, and some times days!

This means that it could be argued that the number of "support tickets" have actually increased, since it's easier for their users to ask questions and have intelligent answers. This lubricates Resolve's platform, increasing the perceived quality, due to providing more support - Except most support is now automatically taken care of by the AI chatbot and doesn't need a human being.

So while human resource requirements have now dropped by 30%, the quality of services provided by Resolve has now probably doubled!

Notice, Resolve still accepts support tickets, and as far as I know they don't have plans to lay off staff, but are rather looking to move resources around internally. So technically the word "saving $20,000 per month" isn't entirely accurate. A more correct description would be "Resolve have acquired $20,000 more of available resources by intelligently leveraging AI". Or summed up with a simple sentence ...

Resolve Systems now have $20,000 worth of human resources available at their disposal for important tasks because of AI

In relative numbers realise that this is 7% of their entire staff. Our AI chatbot basically gave them 5 full time employees "working for free" you might say.

Our goal is 80%

According to IBM 30% automation on support with AI chatbots is the industry average. In such a regard 30% isn't even surprising. We're early in Resolve's project phase, and we're anticipating this number to drastically increase. One example of this can be realised by understanding we've literally done nothing but adding a single button to their existing documentation pages and Team Support account. Let me put that into perspectives with a screenshot of what we've done, coupled with some information.

The above button is currently the only thing we've done. We've got the same button on their Team Support account too, but literally, the above button saves Resolve System for 5 full time employee positions.

I have no idea what Resolve's support technicians are earning per month, and it probably varies according to which country they're working out of - But I would not be surprised if we're talking about roughly $4,000 per month in salary on average.

30% of 15 people is 5 people. 5 people multiplied by $4,000 per month, and we're at $20,000 per month. Multiply this figure by 12 months, and we've got the following figure ...

Resolve System is saving $240,000 per year on something that costs them $250 per month!

This implies they've got an ROI in roughly 50 seconds after installing the above button on their website. This figure ignores the fact that a lot of their users are now more happy with the customer support they're given. In fact, exactly 69% of their current users are now "more happy" according to IBM.

However, 30% isn't anywhere even close to "good enough" for us. Our goal is 80%. If we're able to get there or not depends upon a lot of factors, but drastically increasing the above 30% figure is quite easy. Below is a short list ...

More prominent button

The above button isn't very prominent, and what it does isn't clearly communicated. Simply changing the chat icon to for instance the text "AI Support" would probably significantly increase the number of users using it. Such a button would more clearly communicate what it does, and also take up more real estate on the screen, increasing the likelyhood of users interacting with it. In addition it would make Resolve's users more "curious".

When users have interacted with it once, they're more likely to interact with it again, further reducing the number of support tickets Craig and the rest of his fantastic team need to manually handle. Craig is the leader of their support department. Let's see what Chris, their technical documentation manager have to say about the chatbot.

"The chatbot you have created is leaps and bounds ahead of other tools I have engaged with!"
Chris Wiggins, Director of Training, Resolve Systems

The AI chatbot has basically in a single month permutated through the entire organisation. A couple of weeks ago one of their software developers, Bryan Carey, even told me he's using it to generate parts of his code, and to get help for specific problems as he's maintaining their systems. This comes in addition to the time they're saving on customer support. Basically, a tiny little button on their website has almost completely transformed the way the entire organisation works! And we're still on month one of implementation! Imagine what a more prominet button could do ...

FAQ module

We've got an FAQ module. This allows us to integrate questions triggering the chatbot into their primary documentation and support websites. This might be the first entry point of engagement for some of their users, resulting in more people using their chatbot, resulting in less people creating support tickets. Let's illustrate with an example.

Can I have a ChatGPT chatbot on my website?

Admittedly it doesn't work as well on our chatbot because we have a questionnaire, but that's not a problem for Resolve. The point being of course to "trick" people into interacting with the chatbot, increasing trust in it, making more people use the AI chatbot more, resulting in less human support requests over time.

Actively market the AI chatbot

By actively funneling users into the AI chatbot, users will become more aware of it, and will probably end up using it more. This of course reduces manual support tickets a lot, while also increasing perceived quality and response time. In addition support technicians themselves can start using the chatbot as they're answering support tickets, and inform users in their responses that "this answer was generated by our AI chatbot", for then to lead users to their AI chatbot, to such further funnel users away from their ticket system and into their AI chatbot.

We already know from research that a human support technician with access to AI chatbots increases quality of responses by 18% according to neutral studies, so this would only increase the quality of the human's response, even though it's generated by the AI.

Product integration

Another thing we're discussing with Resolve is to embed the chatbot directly into their primary product, resulting in that as you're using their systems you're never more than a button click away from getting AI help. This will increase engagement with the chatbot drastically, probably resulting in increased perceived quality for their users, significantly increasing support requests, while still significantly decreasing support requests needed to be handled by human support technicians.

Conclusion

If we succeed with automating 80% of their support, it implies their AI chatbot will do the job of 12 people. Multiplying 12 people by $4,000 in monthly salary, and multiplying that number by 12 months again, implies ...

Resolve System might save $576,000 per year!

Yet again, from "a small button" that costs them $250 per month. Please let that fact soak in for a while ... 😉

Try out Resolve's AI chatbot below, and/or contact us for a quote.

So let's try to formulate a conclusion here, now that we've got the figures. If I asked you if you want 12 additional people working for free for you, without you needing to pay for their salary, how would you react? AI chatbots isn't about AI, it's about releasing energy, making your smartest people do more smart things, and less stupid things. I love this quote which is kind of a funny way to look at it; "If a job was such a great thing to have the rich would keep all the jobs to themselves" - Or to rephrase the argument ...

I've got 12 people, they're highly intelligent. Do you want them working for you? You don't have to pay them, they're willing to work for free! At this point maybe you're asking "why?" Well, because they already work for you, and you're already paying them. The only remaining question is do you want them to continue doing mindless tasks or do you want to put them at more important and interesting tasks, generating more revenue for your company, while the AI does the mindless tasks?

... would you say no to the above? Because that's literally the value proposition here ...!!

AI isn't about getting rid of people, it's about automating the boring parts, such that only the interesting parts remains. Resolve having years of experience with automation knows this, and taking advantage of support automation is for them an obvious choice. If it's good enough automation for arguably the experts of automation, my guess is it's good enough for you too.