The GPT Effect: A New Era of Customer Service

Recent breakthroughs with large language models have exceeded all our expectations. We've brought together industry experts to discuss GPT and how it will shape the future of customer service.

We can't say that this surprised us. For years, the industry has praised the potential of AI and machine learning to radically transform the way we work, especially as advances in computing power and data storage have made it possible to train bigger models. But we didn't really expect how quickly recent advances in OpenAI's ChatGPT would open up new possibilities.

At Intercom, we've always shipped to learn. Only by shipping new features quickly can we get proper feedback, learn from it, and repeat it over and over again to better serve our customers. And so, naturally, that's what we did with this new technology. In the past two months, we've delivered a few AI-powered features to 160 customers. And while it's still too early to tell how these LLMs will play out in our lives, we believe we've reached a crucial inflection point, particularly when it comes to customer service.

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So last week we hosted a webinar to dig a little deeper into the business use cases of GPT. Is this wave of innovation different from past waves? Will it transform the way we work and how businesses interact with customers and prospects? Can it trigger a new generation of startups? To give you a little more insight, we've invited some bigwigs from the startup scene to weigh in.

In today's episode, you'll hear:

Ethan Kurzweil, Intercom Board Member and Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners Fergal Reid, our very own Director of Machine Learning Krystal Hu, VC and Startups Reporter at Reuters Talia Goldberg, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners

They will talk about great language models like ChatGPT, how companies are integrating this technology, and how it will shape the future of the customer service industry.

Lack of time? Here are some key points:

We are starting to see the sticky use cases of large language models – there is great potential to increase customer service due to its regularity and the use of natural language. For now, great language models are expected to augment human capabilities rather than replace them, as they can help make professionals more productive and efficient in their work. While it's still too early to measure the success of the Intercom beta experience, adoption and usage of the latest AI-powered features has been huge, and early feedback is very promising. Large language models can become very expensive very quickly. Yet over time they will become cheaper and more ubiquitous, allowing for more experimentation and discovery. Although there are still issues with hallucinations, you can configure and constrain these models to make them more reliable when the situation calls for a higher degree of confidence. Models are not one size fits all. It is likely that in the future, businesses will use a bespoke mix of different customizable templates that address different business issues.

If you like our discussion, check out other episodes of our podcast. You can follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice. The following is a slightly edited transcript of the episode.

The rise of ChatGPT

Krystal Hu: Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to join us. My name is Krystal Hu and I cover companies and startups for Reuters. As many of you know, AI and the wave of ChatGPT have burst onto the scene over the past few months, and a big part of my job is to understand technology and how it changes different aspects of life. . For today's topic, we're going to focus on how ChatGPT will shape the future of customer service. We will discuss what exactly ChatGPT and major language models are, how this technology will be used, the impact it will have on existing and future technologies, how startups are integrating this technology, a...