Intelligence Agents

Normally, humans train artificial-intelligence systems to replace them. ASAPP’s software trains customer-service reps to be better humans.

- Alan Ohnsman and Kenrick Cai

If you’ve ever felt your blood boil after sitting on hold for 40 minutes before reaching an agent . . . who then puts you back on hold, consider that it’s often even worse on the other end of the line. A customer-service representative for JetBlue, for instance, might have to flip rapidly among a dozen or more computer programs just to link your frequent-flier number to a specific itinerary.

“Imagine that cognitive load, while you have someone screaming at you or complaining about some serious problem, and you’re swiveling between 20 screens to see which one you need to be able to help this person,” says Gustavo Sapoznik, 34, the founder and CEO of ASAPP, a New York City–based developer of AI-powered customer-service software.

Sapoznik remembers just such a scene while shadowing a call-center agent at a “very large” company (he won’t name names), watching the worker navigate a “Frankenstack” patchwork of software, entering a caller’s information into six different billing systems before locating it. “That was an eye-opening moment.”

The problem has only gotten worse during the pandemic. Call centers for banks, finance companies, airlines and service companies are being overrun. Call volumes for ASAPP’s customers have spiked between 200% and 900% since the crisis began, according to Sapoznik. Making call centers work isn’t the sexiest use of cutting-edge AI, but it’s a lucrative one.