How AI agents are changing business - Ep 2: The Business Stack of the Future

What are people already using AI to do inside a business?

Oh, yeah.

So o-obviously, they're doing a ton.

Uh, the most interesting thing that I'm seeing is we're moving from the era of a few, just a few months ago, where the AI agents are getting really good at answering questions, and that's really valuable.

Mm.

We're now shifting to the world where not only can they answer questions, they can actually get work done, which is even more exciting.

The agents can now execute real multi-step tasks against your real systems of record, like your CRM or other business systems, uh, and that's when it starts to get pretty exciting.

You know, we see that across a bunch of different areas, uh, where I sit in, in the world of commerce.

We see it in terms of, you know, post-order servicing, where agents can help, uh, understand order status, can initiate and even execute returns and exchanges.

They can...

If you have s- a service appointment, they can help you change your appointment or create an appointment, and they, they know how to escalate to a human when they need to or when they hit an edge case.

So, you know, moving from systems of, of information to systems of action is kind of the big theme that we're seeing.

Mm.

It's such an interesting and fascinating time.

Is that where you see agents creating the most value today?

I think that's where I would say the cutting edge is.

I think the most value, uh, my sort of personal stack ranking, and I'm sure everyone would have a, a sort of a different, uh, take on that, would be, I would say the customer support and service use case is, is probably number one.

That's, I think, where a lot of the early efforts started and where we've kind of gone the farthest in the journey.

They also have a bunch of qualities that make those kinds of use cases very, uh, amenable to, uh, agentic acceleration.

Mm.

They're very high volume.

They're very repetitive.

They have really clear success criteria.

You can really measure, uh, you can measure things like deflection.

You can measure cost savings.

What are people already using AI to do inside a business?

Oh, yeah.

So o-obviously, they're doing a ton.

Uh, the most interesting thing that I'm seeing is we're moving from the era of a few, just a few months ago, where the AI agents are getting really good at answering questions, and that's really valuable.

Mm.

We're now shifting to the world where not only can they answer questions, they can actually get work done, which is even more exciting.

The agents can now execute real multi-step tasks against your real systems of record, like your CRM or other business systems, uh, and that's when it starts to get pretty exciting.

You know, we see that across a bunch of different areas, uh, where I sit in, in the world of commerce.

We see it in terms of, you know, post-order servicing, where agents can help, uh, understand order status, can initiate and even execute returns and exchanges.

They can...

If you have s- a service appointment, they can help you change your appointment or create an appointment, and they, they know how to escalate to a human when they need to or when they hit an edge case.

So, you know, moving from systems of, of information to systems of action is kind of the big theme that we're seeing.

Mm.

It's such an interesting and fascinating time.

Is that where you see agents creating the most value today?

I think that's where I would say the cutting edge is.

I think the most value, uh, my sort of personal stack ranking, and I'm sure everyone would have a, a sort of a different, uh, take on that, would be, I would say the customer support and service use case is, is probably number one.

That's, I think, where a lot of the early efforts started and where we've kind of gone the farthest in the journey.

They also have a bunch of qualities that make those kinds of use cases very, uh, amenable to, uh, agentic acceleration.

Mm.

They're very high volume.

They're very repetitive.

They have really clear success criteria.

You can really measure, uh, you can measure things like deflection.

You can measure cost savings.