Tyler Denk, CEO of beehiiv, shares his stance against the growing trend of companies replacing human customer support with AI. He argues that beehiiv has taken the "complete opposite approach" by investing in real human support, and highlights that users consistently rave about the quality of their support team.
Denk's core logic centers on the idea that there is so much mediocrity in everyday customer experiences that providing genuinely excellent, human-driven support becomes a powerful differentiator. The post implicitly critiques the rush to automate customer-facing interactions and positions high-quality human support as a competitive advantage rather than a cost center.
Vercel shares results from integrating AI Agents into their customer support workflow, reporting a 31% reduction in support tickets. The company outlines three key pillars of their approach: an iterative, customer-centric methodology, thorough internal testing, and safe, incremental rollouts.
The post links to a deeper resource detailing how they achieved these results, positioning their experience as a practical case study for organizations looking to deploy AI in customer-facing support roles. The emphasis on gradual, tested deployment reflects a measured approach to AI adoption rather than a wholesale replacement of existing systems.
A Reddit thread in r/Entrepreneur asks founders and operators which business workflows are genuinely worth automating with AI versus what's just hype. The original poster runs a small software team building AI automations and is looking for real pain points to solve.
The community's responses coalesce around several key themes. Most commenters agree that repetitive, deterministic tasks — such as inbox triage, document summarization, lead qualification, invoice processing, support ticket routing, and meeting-to-action-item capture — deliver the strongest ROI. A recurring insight is that cross-team collaboration and handoffs represent a major hidden cost, with work dying in the back-and-forth between departments. Several respondents emphasize that workflows need to be stable, well-defined, and have clear ownership before AI can meaningfully help; otherwise, automation just "makes the mess faster."
Notably, some voices push back on the AI framing entirely, with one commenter arguing that many workflows are worth automating without AI, and another urging the poster to talk to actual business owners before building anything. The thread serves as a practical reality check on where AI automation is delivering value today — primarily in high-volume, data-driven, low-judgment tasks — and where human oversight and process design still matter more than technology.
A Reddit user in the r/AiForSmallBusiness community poses an open question to small business owners about which AI tools and workflows are genuinely delivering results in day-to-day operations. The post highlights several common use cases, including automating customer support, generating marketing content, qualifying leads, and handling repetitive admin tasks.
The author also references specific examples from the automotive dealership industry, where AI agents are being used to respond to leads, book appointments, and follow up with customers automatically. The post invites responses from other industries, seeking practical, real-world feedback on what's actually saving time and money rather than just generating hype.
A Reddit user in the r/CustomerSuccess community observes that AI customer support bots have noticeably improved in quality. Where they once looped through generic, unhelpful responses — often prompting users to demand a human agent — recent interactions have surprised them with bots that actually understand the problem and resolve issues effectively.
The poster acknowledges that AI support still isn't perfect, noting that bots sometimes miss the point entirely. However, the improvement over the past year or two is described as significant. They invite others to share whether they've had similar experiences or if it's just luck.