Introduction
If you're drowning in customer support tickets and your team is stretched thin, you know how frustrating it can be. Response times creep up, customers get impatient, and your agents burn out from answering the same questions over and over. What if you could cut your response times by more than half while your team actually gets to focus on the problems that need real human attention?
That's where Forethought comes in. This AI-powered platform is built to handle the repetitive stuff so your support team can do what they do best – solve complex customer issues.
Think of it as giving your support team a super-smart assistant that works around the clock, never needs a coffee break, and gets smarter with every interaction. Some companies are seeing 15x returns on their investment, which sounds almost too good to be true until you dig into what this tool actually does.
Key Features
Solve Agent: Get 24/7 customer support that works across all your channels – chat, email, and voice. Your customers get instant help anytime they need it, which means happier customers and fewer late-night calls for your team.
Triage Agent: Sort and tag support tickets automatically with smart AI that understands what’s urgent. Your team can jump on the important stuff right away instead of wasting time organizing emails.
Assist Agent: Give your support team an AI helper that suggests answers and next steps in real-time. It’s like having an experienced teammate looking over their shoulder, helping them solve problems faster.
Discover Agent: Find out what customers keep asking about and get suggestions on what help articles to write. You’ll spot patterns in customer questions and fix problems before they become bigger headaches.
Easy Integrations: Connect Forethought to the tools you already use like Salesforce, Zendesk, or ServiceNow. You won’t need to switch between different systems or retrain your team on new software.
Our Take
Forethought packs serious automation muscle for customer support teams, but you’ll need to weigh the setup time against the benefits. The AI agents can slash response times by more than half and handle tons of routine questions automatically – that’s real time and money saved. But here’s the thing: getting it up and running isn’t exactly plug-and-play. You’re looking at weeks of setup and tweaking to get it working just right for your business.
The price tag starts at around $30,000 per year, which puts it out of reach for many smaller operations. If you’re already using Salesforce, Zendesk, or similar platforms, the integration works smoothly. Just know that some users report the system can be slow to load at times, and the AI occasionally suggests weird answers that don’t quite fit.
For businesses handling hundreds of support tickets daily, the math probably works out – especially with reported returns of 15x. But if you’re a lean team with modest ticket volume, simpler tools like Intercom’s AI features or Zendesk’s built-in automation might do the job without the heavy lifting. Bottom line: Forethought delivers powerful automation, but make sure you have the resources and ticket volume to justify the investment.
Pricing
Forethought offers three main pricing tiers: Basic, Professional, and Enterprise. All plans require contacting sales for custom quotes.
The Basic plan includes AI agent for chat, autoflows, custom actions, insights dashboard, ready-to-use ticket triage models, CSAT collection, and security and compliance features.
The Professional plan includes everything in Basic plus omnichannel AI agent support, AI agents for multiple brands, advanced ticket insights, AI conversation insights, custom ticket triage models, and multilingual support.
The Enterprise plan includes everything in Professional plus Forethought API access, knowledge base gap detection and article creation, autoflow gap detection and generation, advanced security and compliance, and advanced support.
Additional add-ons are available including Assist Agent (AI copilot for human agents), Agent QA (automated quality assurance), and Forethought for Slack (internal support via Slack). The Professional plan includes 2 branded widgets while Enterprise offers unlimited. Custom handoff models are included with 3 in Professional and 6 in Enterprise.
Pricing follows a blend model combining platform access fees with usage-based costs calculated on deflection volume for AI-resolved inquiries and ticket volume for agent handoffs. A Proof of Value demonstration is available instead of a traditional free trial.
Final Thoughts
So what’s it gonna be? If you’re fielding hundreds of tickets daily and your support team is running on fumes, Forethought could be the relief you’ve been looking for. Just remember – this isn’t a quick fix you can set up over lunch. You’ll need time, patience, and probably a dedicated person to get it humming along smoothly.
Take a hard look at your ticket volume, your budget, and your team’s capacity for change. If you’re spending more time answering the same questions than actually helping customers, it might be time to bring in the robots. Your team will thank you when they can finally tackle the interesting problems instead of copy-pasting the same password reset instructions for the hundredth time.
Ready to see if Forethought fits your business? Give it a test run and see if those 15x returns are real for you too.
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FAQs
