No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

How AI Agents Are Transforming Customer Support, with Decagon’s Jesse Zhang

Jan 16, 2025

Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, discusses groundbreaking advancements in AI-powered customer support. He shares insights on the business impact of adopting AI agents, emphasizing improvements in efficiency and customer satisfaction. The conversation dives into the significance of voice-based interactions and the challenges of latency. Additionally, Jesse highlights the crossover between competitive math communities and AI startups, showcasing how this unique background fosters innovation in the tech landscape.

30:09

Episode guests

Jesse Zhang

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Decagon's AI technology significantly improves customer support by enhancing response times and overall satisfaction rates for businesses.

The company's future focus on voice capabilities aims to address latency issues, allowing for more responsive and efficient customer interactions.

Deep dives

Decagon's Innovative AI Solutions

Decagon specializes in developing generative AI solutions designed to enhance customer support services for both large enterprises and startups. With a focus on providing transparent and observable AI interactions, the company prioritizes clarity in how its AI agents make decisions and respond to customer inquiries. By engaging directly with prominent clients like Notion and Duolingo, Decagon has honed its understanding of customer needs, tailoring its products to suit various industry demands. This targeted approach has positioned Decagon as a key player in the evolving landscape of AI-driven customer service.

Intro

3min

AI Transforming Customer Support

9min

Voice Innovations in Customer Support

4min

The Olympiad Effect: Cultivating AI Talent

5min

Future of AI in Customer Support

9min

Today on No Priors, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, Jesse Zhang, joins Elad to discuss the future of agentic customer support. Decagon provides AI-powered customer interactions for companies like Rippling, Notion, Duolingo, Classpass, Substack, Vanta, Eventbrite, and more. Jesse shares the thesis behind starting Decagon, why he sees customer support as the ideal entry point for agentic technology, and what areas of AI excite him most. They also discuss voice-based interfaces, issues with latency in current capabilities, and the connection between young math olympiad communities and today’s AI startups.

Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

0:30 Starting Decagon

3:15 Business impact of adopting agents for customer support and customer ops

8:00 AI infrastructure and models for customer success agents

12:05 Voice-based capabilities and text-to-speech engines

15:00 Combatting latency

16:25 Crossover of math and AI communities

21:12 Exciting areas of AI

25:29 Strengths and weaknesses of agents

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