122 AI Agent Ascension

In this episode of CRM Talk, Steve Chipman and Sam Biardo discuss AI agents and their impact on business. They talk about how AI agents have evolved from basic IVR functionality to sophisticated business tools. Steve mentions Greg Eisenberg's insights about various types of agents (acquisition, research, content, and community agents) and how they're replacing human tasks at a fraction of the cost ($2,000 in agent costs vs $2 million in salary costs). They discuss Salesforce's Agentforce, with Steve noting Marc Benioff's aggressive marketing against Microsoft's Copilot. Sam shares his experience using Copilot and discusses implementing AI in their Starfish product, including their pricing strategy of raising rates to cover AI token costs. They also explore various pricing models for AI services, from token-based to per-question pricing, and discuss the integration trends they're seeing in the industry, particularly with ServiceNow, HubSpot, and Infor. The conversation concludes with a discussion of sales tax software integration needs and AI-powered headshot generation tools. Sam LinkedIn : linkedin.com/in/sambiardo/ Steve LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/schipman/ Steve X: @stevechipman