Why Your AI ROI Numbers Are Probably Wrong – And What to Measure Instead

Forethought’s Antoine Nasr discusses how outcome-based AI is reshaping the way enterprises measure the true value of customer service automation In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Antoine Nasr, Head of AI at Forethought, recently acquired by Zendesk. The pair discuss Forethought’s agentic AI push to tackle one of the most uncomfortable conversations in the CX space right now: is the ROI you're reporting on your AI investment actually telling you anything useful? Twelve months of AI euphoria in the enterprise is giving way to a harder question: was it worth it? Antoine Nasr makes the case that most organizations are measuring the wrong things, and explains what Forethought is doing differently: Deflection is a broken metric: A deflected ticket tells you nothing about whether the customer's issue was actually resolved. Forethought's outcome-based pricing model only charges when the AI agent genuinely resolves a conversation, and shows admins exactly why each one was classified the way it was. The $1B ROI figure? Already outdated: Antoine is candid that Forethought's headline customer ROI number has already been surpassed, and walks through the framework for calculating both the hard dollar savings and the softer but real gains in CSAT, brand value, and churn reduction. AI as a single entry point: User expectations have shifted. Customers no longer want to navigate your org structure, they want one interface that routes intelligently across support, commerce, sales, and beyond. Forethought's RevTech integrations are built around that reality. Self-improving agents are here: Forethought's Discover product automatically identifies support topic gaps, builds agents to handle them, and improves after every interaction, closing the loop between performance data and agent behavior.