Benefits of AI Agents for Email Ticket Deflection

Using an AI support agent at RB2B has saved us $30k since April. “Is an AI agent worth it?” You bet your ass it is. Here’s the breakdown: BACKGROUND I started using Intercom’s Fin agent with RB2B back in April. The rollout was gradual over April and May. In June I let it off the leash and it started handling email tickets and was one of our two primary support avenues (with self-serve workflows). At the end of September, I mothballed self-serve workflows as an initial means of support and went AI-first. ——— COST Fin costs us $0.99 per resolution. Between April 1st and today Fin was involved in 4998 conversations. It resolved 2773 of them. We paid Intercom $2,745.49 for that. Money well spent. ——— HUMAN EQUIVALENT Let’s assume that the average time spent on a ticket for our human team is 20 minutes. Fin has saved our human team 924 hours of work since April. Those 924 hours would have cost us $37,776.29. ——— SAVINGS Easy math. $35,030.80 saved between April and today. ——— OUTLOOK The figures below are based on the improved AI resolution rate (~60%) between July and today. Estimated over next 12 months… - AI tickets resolved: 6405 - AI cost: $6,341.33 - Human hours saved: 2135.13 The equivalent human cost would be $87,252.83 over the next year. Or, a SAVINGS OF $80,911.50 by this time in 2025. …and that’s at our current resolution rate with our current volume, both of which are consistently increasing. “Is an AI agent worth it?” You tell me.

Came back from vacation Monday. Inbox? On fire.🔥 Buried in the chaos: a customer story that stopped me in my tracks (and made me so happy). A Customer Support leader at a fast-growing financial services company used AI to transform his team - in just a few weeks. This leader works for a financial services company that’s in high-growth mode. Great news, right? Yes! For everyone except his Customer Support team… As the business grew faster, they were bombarded with repetitive questions about simple things like loan statuses and document requirements. Reps were overwhelmed. Customers faced longer response times. The company has been a HubSpot customer for nearly 10 years. They turned to Customer Agent, HubSpot’s AI Agent, and got to work: - Connected it to their knowledge base → accurate, fast answers - Set smart handoff rules → AI handles the simple, reps handle the complex - Customized the tone → sounds like them, not a generic bot (you know the type) In a short space of time, things changed dramatically: - Customer Agent now resolves more tickets than any rep - 94.9% of customers report being happy with the experience - For the first time, the team can prioritize complex issues and provide proactive support to high-value customers It’s exciting to see leaders using Customer Agent to not just respond to more tickets, but to increase CSAT and empower their teams to drive more impact. 2025 is the year of AI transformed Customer Support. I am stunned by how quickly that transformation is playing out!

AI isn’t replacing your post-sales team. It’s replacing their busywork. Customer Support teams are quietly teaching the rest of us a powerful lesson: You don’t scale by working harder, you scale by deflecting smarter. SaaStr just shared that AI-driven support tools are hitting 70% deflection rates (link to blog post in comments).  That’s 7 out of 10 tickets handled without a human and without compromising experience. Now think about what that could mean outside of support: ·      What if your CSMs could deflect 70% of "how do I..." questions? ·      What if onboarding bottlenecks had AI-powered nudges before humans ever got involved? ·      What if renewals didn’t rely on “checking in,” but instead on timely, automated value reminders? Here’s the real shift: the post-sale world isn’t becoming less human. It’s becoming more intentional. 👀 I’m experimenting with AI-powered deflection strategies in onboarding, support, and customer success. If you're trying the same, I’d love to hear what’s working (or flopping). 👇 Drop your best (or worst) use case in the comments. #CustomerSuccess #SaaS #AIinSaaS #CustomerExperience #PostSales #ScaleSmarter #RetentionStrategy #DigitalCS #OperationalExcellence #TechEnabledCS