Aptitude 8's CEO, Connor Jeffers was joined by Blackthorn.io's CEO and Founder Chris Federspiel for an episode of GTM with AI where they chatted all things from bootstrapping to the future of AI in customer support to Elon Musk.
Unveiling the AI Era: Insights from Chris Federspiel
In an era marked by rapid technological advancements, artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping industries and redefining the way businesses operate. Chris Federspiel, the Founder and CEO of
Blackthorn.io, shares his journey through the AI landscape, reflecting on its potential, risks, and the evolving nature of technology. This article encapsulates Chris's experiences and insights, casting light on the multifaceted implications of AI.
The Beginnings of Blackthorn.io
Chris Federspiel's journey with Blackthorn.io is rooted in his extensive experience in the Salesforce ecosystem, spanning over a decade. Leveraging his established relationships with Salesforce sales representatives and customers, Federspiel initially founded a services company. His deep understanding of the ecosystem led to the identification of specific areas that required technological enhancement, such as payments and event management. This realization, combined with innovative ideas from a co-founder, sparked the beginning of Blackthorn.io.
Under Federspiel's leadership, the company began developing Salesforce-native applications, leveraging previous relationships. This strategic approach laid the foundation for Blackthorn.io's suite of tools, which automate events, streamline payments, and more, all while prioritizing customization and comprehensive customer support.
AI: A Dual-Edged Sword
As the conversation begins to move towards AI, Chris acknowledges the elephant in the room. AI, while a huge transformative tool capable of revolutionizing industries, enhancing productivity, and offering new problem-solving avenues, comes with its risks.
Chris acknowledges the inherent security risks associated with AI, particularly regarding data privacy and unintended consequences. His views reflect a balanced perspective, advocating for cautious optimism and responsible AI deployment. He goes on to discuss specific instances where AI can inadvertently lead to biases or errors if not properly monitored and controlled. This is why things such as regulatory frameworks, ethical considerations, and the need for transparency in AI algorithms and data usage are extremely important.
The Impact of AI on Businesses
But, with high risk does come high reward. AI's adaptability and scalability allows for huge opportunities for businesses. In this episode, Chris discusses how AI can automate operations, personalize customer interactions, and unlock new revenue streams.
Chris' insights are particularly important for small businesses, as AI has the ability to help them level the competitive playing field, enabling them to access advanced tools previously reserved for larger corporations.He shares success stories and specific use cases where AI has been a game-changer in improving efficiency, customer satisfaction, and market reach.
Chris also touches on the future of work in the context of AI, including the changing skill sets required, the potential for job creation in new sectors, and the importance of lifelong learning and adaptation.
Where Chris is Spending His Time & Energy
Chris Federspiel shares his current focus on blending customer requests with visionary development in his work. He highlights the importance of building what customers need while also innovating beyond their immediate requests, akin to Steve Jobs' approach with the touchscreen over a traditional keyboard.
Chris is particularly invested in enhancing user experience by streamlining complex configurations into simple, intuitive interactions. This involves fine-tuning AI models to understand the context within their applications, allowing users to describe what they want, such as specific event configurations, without clicking through cumbersome interfaces.
Chris envisions a future where tedious UI interactions are replaced by more natural and efficient forms of input, like voice or thought commands, significantly simplifying and improving the user experience. His goal is to keep his application at the forefront of this technological evolution, ensuring it remains ahead of competitors for years to come.
Navigating the Future: AI in Customer Support
"I've interacted with a fair number of bots right now, and they’re still pretty dumb." - Chris Federspiel
Chris explores the idea of AI in customer support and finds that AI completely taking over customer support is still a few years out. The technology just isn't there yet.
However, a place where Chris does see AI being extremely capable of taking over is in error messages.
He envisions AI systems that can not only identify the specific cause of an error by analyzing the code base, something currently beyond the scope of human support teams, but also suggest precise fixes for these issues. He also foresees AI being able to understand the unique context of each error, potentially even requesting additional information like video recordings to accurately diagnose and respond to complex or multifaceted problems. He also believes that AI can effectively co-pilot for support agents when it comes to doing things like querying code. But this isn't without changing the customer support landscape a bit. The intro of AI and utilizing it more and more affects the skills needed in these roles. Tier one people will become tier three people because they don't need the
skill set to query code and AI can do it for them. This will increase efficiency in a huge way!