C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Erik Ashby Of Helpshift On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans
An Interview With Kieran Powell
Consider how you manage, train, and direct AI. Humans perform better when they have a good manager who understands them and can direct them to be more effective. AI is very similar. Consider the experts you will employ who will be responsible for managing the AI. These are new job descriptions that will be coming soon as we also become experts in using this new technology.
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance and integrate into various aspects of business, decision-makers at the highest levels face the complex task of determining where AI can be most effectively utilized and where the human touch remains irreplaceable. This series seeks to explore the nuanced decisions made by C-Suite executives regarding the implementation of AI in their operations. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Erik Ashby.
Erik Ashby is the Senior Director and Head of Product at Helpshift, the world’s leading in-app mobile customer service platform that has been deployed on more than 2.5 billion mobile devices. Erik has spent his 25 year-career leading digital innovation in communication across the decades, working on such products as Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, and Microsoft Outlook. At Helpshift, Erik leads the company’s product and design teams as it creates the next generation of in-app customer service experiences for both mobile and the future metaverse.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I grew up in Southern California during the home computer boom of the 1980s. After school, I’d spend countless hours experimenting with an early Apple II computer, dialing into any mainframe I could get a number for, and playing all sorts of games — ones I could find, buy, borrow, or copy. Tech was mind-blowing even back then, leveling the playing field for everyone, and I was just a kid soaking it all in.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I was building software that was being tested by a US military base early in my career. One day, I got a call saying the whole email communication system at the base was shut down, and they thought it was my software’s fault. I didn’t believe it, but there was a bug in my software that was causing the issue.
So, I hopped on a plane that same day with a fix on a floppy disk (yeah, old school), and by the following day, I was sitting with a big-shot 4-star general, trying to explain how the goof-up shut down the email for his whole base. I was toast, trial over.
But, surprise! Instead of kicking me out, he asked me to stick around. We fixed the software glitch, and he wanted me to help his team roll it out and get the base back up and running.
He mentioned working with many tech companies over the years but had yet to experience someone flying out to give this much personal attention to a problem. It hit me then — even though I could claim responsibility for bringing down a US base (for a brief moment), what matters most isn’t the tech but the human connection.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
At Helpshift, our primary focus is creating exceptional customer support experiences geared toward aiding people. In my view, technology’s most crucial role should be enabling humans to assist and uplift each other, regardless of location or time. Thanks to advancements in mobile, VR, AR, and AI technologies, we now have numerous additional ways to engage, connect, and offer support. That makes it incredibly exciting to be involved in developing these empowering experiences.
Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. In your experience, what have been the most challenging aspects of integrating AI into your business operations, and how have you balanced these with the need to preserve human-centric roles?
AI is evolving so fast that the biggest challenge is understanding the role of AI as it relates to humans, especially when what it can do changes so rapidly. In the past several months, there have been some legitimate concerns and examples about AI overstepping its boundaries, not only resulting in poor experiences but, worse, in some cases, possibly infringing on the rights of humans. I see it working best when we don’t treat AI as some magical wizard that can solve all our problems. Instead, it’s best to approach AI with a practical mindset. Approach AI with the understanding that it is a tool, a technology that we have developed, and as such, we, as humans, need to understand how to use and leverage its unique capabilities to expand our own abilities. AI should not replace humans but rather assist us in providing enhanced and improved services.
Can you share a specific instance where AI initially seemed like the optimal solution but ultimately proved less effective than human intervention? What did this experience teach you about the limitations of AI in your field?
There was a recent incident where a car dealership added a generative AI chatbot on their sales site as a way for consumers to engage. This seemed fine to start with; however, as consumers engaged, they realized that they could control the conversation, and eventually led the chatbot to confirm that the car dealership would honor a price quote from the chatbot for $1 to purchase a brand-new car! This was a clear example of someone treating the AI as the magical wizard for their site, with little to no human oversight. Instead, in this case, the AI should have been optimized and managed so that it would recognize how to respond to queries but also it would have been trained to work with and engage humans at precisely the right time.
How do you navigate the ethical implications of implementing AI in your company, especially concerning potential job displacement and ensuring ethical AI usage?
At Helpshift and Keywords Player Engagement, we take a very practical approach to leveraging AI, humans, and technology to create enhanced engagement service offerings. This strategy views AI as a tool to improve the service in conjunction with human agents to provide better support and increase consumer engagement. In addition, AI is tightly integrated and managed to ensure safe and ethical usage and minimize AI hallucinations.
Could you describe a successful instance in your company where AI and human skills were synergistically combined to achieve a result that neither could have accomplished alone?
The use of AI in customer service is a great example of how AI and humans can work together. Training AI to understand language, determine intent, and triage problems through well-defined workflows helps offload the grunt work from the agents, allowing them to focus on problem-solving, creative solutions, and empathy for the customer. As a result, AI helps speed up conversations and provides insights to the agents, while agents can offer the human touch, which results in higher engagement and customer satisfaction.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans, and Why?” How have these 5 things impacted your work or your career?
- Approach AI from a practical perspective, understand its strengths, but realize that AI, like humans, works best when it is properly managed. In my work, I see the highest impact of AI when it is managed and optimized for the task at hand.
- Leverage AI, including generative AI, for pattern matching, identification of trends, language & intent understanding, and triage all to help & assist humans in their workloads. AI is powerful, and in many cases better than humans, at being able to consume vast amounts of data and then use that data to match with a pattern instantly, identify the intent of a conversation, and/or walk through a workflow to clarify a problem. However, they are not creative, empathetic, or good at problem-solving beyond matching existing patterns. As such, they need to be paired with a human to complete the story.
- Generative AI, specifically, needs to be closely managed and controlled to provide value but only in a safe and ethical way. Generative AI (photos, text, and now video) can assist humans by providing quick answers or inspiration. However, if left unchecked, it can generate incorrect responses, nonsense images, or may infringe on copyright. Huge strides are being made with Generative AI in the market, and it is most powerful when it is well-trained, managed, and optimized.
- Consider how you manage, train, and direct AI. Humans perform better when they have a good manager who understands them and can direct them to be more effective. AI is very similar. Consider the experts you will employ who will be responsible for managing the AI. These are new job descriptions that will be coming soon as we also become experts in using this new technology.
- Not all AI is the same. It’s a broad term encompassing a wide spectrum of technologies, each serving distinct purposes. While generative AI has been in the news lately, it’s important to recognize that it represents just one facet of AI. There are various classifications, including clustering AI, which identifies trends, and Language AI, which understands speech and intent. Additionally, there are different ways to work with AIs, including how the AI is trained and what workflows are coupled with the AI. To effectively leverage AI, assessing your specific needs and understanding how different AI technologies can support your workload is crucial. By exploring these options, you can identify the most suitable AI solutions to enhance productivity and address your unique requirements.
Looking towards the future, in which areas of your business do you foresee AI making the most significant impact, and conversely, in which areas do you believe a human touch will remain indispensable?
I know there is a lot of hype in the news about generative AI, given how flashy it is and the “wowness” that it can create. However, I feel that Language AI is just as important. Language AI has the potential to fundamentally change how we as humans understand each other across the globe. The ability to speak and understand anyone, anywhere, at any time, is amazingly powerful and will enable more people everywhere to gain new economic possibilities. As humans, we bring the human touch, the ability to care, feel, and have genuine empathy. These are qualities that AI will never have, and tools like language AI will only allow us to share, feel, and express more. This is very powerful.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Watch Helpshift.com as we change how the world engages through the first AI-driven modern support journey.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Erik Ashby Of Helpshift On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.