Thumbtack Improves Support Operations With Forethought

This local services marketplace leader’s support team increased ticket response efficiency with customer support AI.

“We knew we were talking to really smart people that were thinking about things the right way and would be great partners and would collaborate which aligns exactly with our culture.”

– Support Ops, Leader In The Services Marketplace

Challenges

The Challenge

Born out of a need experienced by the founders over a decade ago, this double-sided marketplace is now the largest in their space, with a valuation north of one billion dollars. Customer Support has to tackle needs on both sides of the marketplace along with compliance challenges across the regions they serve. The company uses Salesforce to store all customer information and support materials with integration from a handful of other tools.

The company used to track ticket KPIs, like Time-to-Resolution, but have one metric that they track now: Likelihood-to-Continue (LTC). They specifically want to know if someone will continue to use the marketplace, both as a customer and as a business. The Customer Support team members need to know which tickets to invest their time on and which can be automated.

We frequently redo things that are working just fine, just because we know that soon they’re not going to.

Solution

The Solution

As the team continues to rapidly scale, this company leveraged its human resources through the use of AI and machine learning. More than just technology, they were also looking for a partner to build to their requirements.

They rolled out a test that measured the success of their existing solution’s routing tool against Forethought’s AI.

We are in a happy middle between taking a full-on product approach and a full-on human approach.

Results

The Results

Well, you can probably guess where the head-to-head test netted out. Specifically, the team said, “We found that Forethought’s AI was quite a bit more accurate, across the board, and we were pleasantly surprised that we’d get the return data back from Forethought faster, within seconds rather than minutes”. The switch was made without a peep from the Customer Support Agents – no workflow issues were reported.

Future

What’s Next? 

Forethought continues to learn and auto-route cases as needed. As a machine learning AI solution, Forethought Triage will continue to take in information and optimize workflows. New models will be set up to further leverage Forethought’s AI capabilities, all to enhance the human resources on the team.