Zendesk CEO Tom Eggemeier and Sierra co-founder Clay Bavor made a bold declaration at HumanX in Amsterdam: per-seat pricing for software is on its way out. Both leaders, whose companies sell AI agents for customer service, argued that customers should only pay for AI agents when they deliver tangible results.
Eggemeier was unequivocal: "Seats are dead." He announced that Zendesk has already moved to outcome-based pricing for its AI agents, starting in August 2024, and plans to drop seats across its business in the next three to six months. For many companies, pricing by interaction will be a first step, he said.
Sierra, on the other hand, charges customers only when its agents resolve an issue or make a sale. Bavor put it in stark numbers: if a company pays one euro to resolve a case that costs ten in a call center, it saves nine euros each time. "The ROI is so clear you don’t have to do fuzzy envelope math about productivity gains," he said.
Both CEOs emphasized the importance of outcome-based pricing, with Eggemeier defining an outcome as a problem solved without human intervention. For a UK used-car marketplace, it can mean an AI agent closing a £500 gap on a sale. Sierra originates over $1 billion of new mortgages a month for companies like Rocket Mortgage and serves almost half of the Fortune 50 and one in three of the world’s largest banks.
The two leaders differed on what keeps a software company alive in this new landscape. Bavor argued that companies with authoritative data, such as SAP in supply chains, hold up best. Eggemeier, on the other hand, gave three tests: companies must treat AI as both an existential threat and an opportunity, change their business model, and send people into the field to guide customers.
As AI agents become more prevalent, both CEOs expect them to handle a significant portion of interactions. Zendesk predicts that AI agents will handle over 80% of interactions within three years, with humans handling the rest. Bavor said personal agents like Meta’s Muse will soon talk directly to business agents, within about six months.
Cybersecurity, however, remains a pressing concern. Eggemeier called it his most worrying topic as CEO, saying that "offensive AI-agent hacking capability is ahead of defensive capability." The recent Hugging Face incident, in which OpenAI agents reached Hugging Face, highlighted the risks of unchecked AI growth.
Dieser Artikel wurde mit Unterstützung von KI verfasst.
News Factory APP - agentische News für besseres SEO & AEO.