Introducing new AI-powered features in Herodesk

Nov 4, 2024

Today, we’re announcing the release of the first AI-powered features in Herodesk.

When we originally created Herodesk, we wanted to create a customer service platform for small and mid-sized businesses that would make it easy for them to help their customers.

That’s what we believe good customer service is all about: Making it easy.

It should be easy for you to help your customers so that it’s easy for them to get the help they need.

One of the things that has gotten a lot of attention in the customer service sector recently is artificial intelligence. It’s a great way to automate and simplify many tasks in customer service. It’s not a silver bullet that can do everything for you, but it can be a great help when utilised correctly.

That’s how we’ve been working with AI for the past few months: In a way that helps you help your customers.

We’re working with AI in three stages:

Stage one: Text manipulation and analysis.
Stage two: Suggested replies based on relevant context.
Stage three: Autonomous chatbot that can automatically reply to customers.

And today, we’re announcing the release of the first AI-powered features in Herodesk in stage one. We’ll give an in-depth presentation to each of the new features over the next few weeks, but for now, here’s a brief introduction:

Automatic translation of in- and outbound messages

Herodesk can now automatically translate inbound messages from customers and outbound messages from you to and from any language and across any channel.

This works regardless of whether you communicate via e-mail, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM’s or our Live chat.

For example, if a customer writes to you in French, you can ask Herodesk to translate it to English. Then, as you type your reply in English, it can automatically translate it to French, so the customer receives a reply in his own language.

AI Assistant to help you

We’ve created an assistant that comes along with every customer conversation that can help you in different ways.

For example, summarise the conversation, translate parts, or suggest next steps. The assistant can also see the reply you’re drafting to the customer, and help improve it by fixing grammatical errors, making it more professional, concise, or elaborate. Just ask the assistant, and it’ll help.

Message analysis and intention understanding in Rules

You can use AI to analyse messages from your customers. Until now, we’ve been able to trigger rules on certain keywords, but with this update, AI can analyse the message instead.

Does the customer want to change or cancel an order? Is the customer happy, angry, or does the message seem important? Or is it written in a specific language?

There are numerous ways that we can now use AI to get a deeper understanding of inbound messages and create rules to automate workflows around them.

One way to utilise this that we’re particularly excited about is this:

When a new conversation is received, check if the customer wishes to change or cancel an order. If yes, send a message to your WMS to pause the order (so that it’s not sent to the customer) until your customer service team has handled the question.

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The new AI-powered features are available now for all current and future customers. To get access, you must upgrade to the new Herodesk Plus package that contains AI, priced at €39.95 per user per month (still with a 20% discount for yearly prepayment).

The new prices and packages are not yet visible on our website. They are available through your Herodesk subscription page, though. Honestly, we’ve been more focused on the product than our sales site, but we’ll update it ASAP.

We will keep updating, improving and adding more features in Stage one, all focused on utilising the powers of AI to make it easier for you to help your customers.

We will implement the Stage two features mentioned above during the first half of 2025. This will enable Herodesk to automatically write draft replies to your customers based on the knowledge it has gained about your business.

Finally, we plan to implement Stage three, an autonomous chatbot that can automatically reply to your customers, during the second half of 2025.

But more on this later. For now, we hope you enjoy the new features. Please share any feedback, ideas, or suggestions you have with us.