The hidden cost of AI: how deflection pricing bleeds your brand dry
Most AI vendors play a dangerous game with your customers—they profit when people can't reach your team, even if the experience falls short. There’s a better way: a pricing philosophy that rewards outcomes which strengthen relationships while delivering measurable business impact.
Customer service AI shouldn't force you to choose between efficiency and trust. Yet that's exactly what happens when vendors only charge for "AI resolutions"—creating perverse incentives to deflect customers at all costs. The result? Frustrated customers, overwhelmed agents, and executives questioning their AI investment.
A more modern approach starts from a simple truth: trust compounds like interest, and every customer conversation is an investment in your brand’s future. A dual-outcome model—resolutions and assists—ensures AI delivers both immediate efficiency gains and long-term loyalty:
Resolutions deliver complete, on-brand, personalized automation when it’s the right path.
Assists supercharge agents with context and next-best actions when human judgment matters.
The fatal flaw in traditional AI pricing
Traditional AI vendors operate on a containment-first model that creates misaligned incentives throughout your customer service operation. When pricing is tied exclusively to "AI-resolved" conversations, the system rewards keeping customers away from human agents—regardless of outcome quality.
This approach generates predictable problems across your organization. Customers receive thin, unsatisfying responses that technically qualify as "resolved" but leave core issues unaddressed. When these customers inevitably escalate, your agents inherit frustrated situations without proper context or preparation. The handoff becomes a liability rather than a solution.
Vendors profit when customers suffer. That's the uncomfortable reality of containment-based pricing. Every deflection generates revenue, whether the customer leaves satisfied or searches elsewhere for real help. Your brand reputation becomes collateral damage in the vendor's optimization for their own metrics.
What competitors celebrate as "AI resolutions" often represent missed opportunities to deepen customer relationships. A password reset handled efficiently by AI creates value. A complex billing inquiry deflected with generic responses destroys trust that took years to build.
AI CX platform comparison matrix of solutions and key capabilities
Trust as compound interest
Gladly approaches AI pricing with a radically different philosophy: every conversation is an investment opportunity, not a cost center to minimize. Like compound interest, small trust-protecting moments build massive long-term value through increased customer lifetime value, reduced churn, and organic advocacy.
This investment mindset reshapes how we think about automation outcomes. A quick deflection might save pennies today, but it costs trust tomorrow. Meanwhile, an AI-assisted conversation that equips your agent with perfect context and empathy cues can turn a routine conversation into a loyalty-building moment.
Trust compounds when AI respects the customer relationship. Our pricing model reflects this reality by valuing both fully automated resolutions and meaningful agent assists. Each outcome type serves a strategic purpose in building your competitive advantage through superior customer experience.
The mathematics of trust are clear: customers who trust your brand spend 2.5x more annually and refer others at twice the rate. Every conversation represents a compound interest calculation—immediate efficiency gains plus long-term relationship dividends.
The Gladly model: two outcomes, both valuable
Gladly's pricing recognizes two distinct but equally important outcomes that drive sustainable business impact.
Resolutions represent AI's ability to deliver complete, on-brand conversations from start to finish. These aren't simple FAQ responses, but contextual, personalized conversations that reflect your brand voice and customer history. When AI processes a return, updates account information, or resolves a billing question entirely, it creates efficiency without compromise.
Assists represent AI's ability to empower human agents with enhanced context, empathy cues, and next-best actions. When a conversation requires human judgment, AI doesn't abandon the conversation—it enriches it. Agents receive complete customer history and strategic suggestions that turn routine service into relationship building.
This dual-outcome approach creates powerful synergies. Resolutions scale your efficiency and reduce operational costs. Assists protect your brand promise and accelerate agent performance. Together, they deliver automation that strengthens rather than weakens customer relationships.
Both outcomes advance your strategic objectives. Resolutions prove AI's ability to handle volume efficiently. Assists demonstrate AI's ability to enhance human performance when personal touch matters most. You invest in measurable outcomes that compound over time, not vanity metrics that disappear under scrutiny.
The flywheel effect: outcomes that compound
Gladly's pricing model creates a self-improving system where every assist makes future resolutions more likely and more effective. This flywheel effect distinguishes strategic AI investment from tactical cost reduction.
Every assisted conversation generates training data that improves AI performance. When your agent successfully resolves a complex shipping issue with AI support, that conversation teaches the system how to handle similar situations independently next time. The assist becomes an investment in future resolution capability.
Assists drive smarter AI, which drives more resolutions. This creates accelerating returns on your AI investment rather than diminishing ones. Month over month, you see increasing resolution rates without sacrificing conversation quality or customer satisfaction.
The incentive alignment is crucial: Gladly succeeds when your AI continuously improves, not when it maintains static deflection rates. Our revenue grows as your outcomes improve, creating partnership rather than vendor dependence.
This flywheel effect extends beyond individual conversations to systemic improvements. AI learns your brand voice, understands your customers, and recognizes patterns that predict positive outcomes. Every conversation strengthens the entire system's performance.
Proven results across industries
Real brands achieve remarkable results when AI pricing aligns with business outcomes rather than containment metrics.
KÜHL achieved a 59% AI resolution rate while simultaneously generating a 120% lift in revenue per conversation. This combination—high automation with increased customer value—demonstrates how proper incentive alignment drives compound benefits rather than efficiency-trust tradeoffs.
Breeze Airways saw 71% of conversations enhanced by AI assistance, maintaining consistently high CSAT scores throughout their automation journey. Their agents became more effective, not redundant, as AI equipped them with superior context and recommendations.
Smith Optics achieved an impressive 67% resolution rate on product help and recommendation conversations with AI-powered support. "With Gladly's AI, every conversation feels like a one-on-one with a seasoned gear guide." shares Julie McGinnis, Customer Service Supervisor at Smith Optics. The AI not only improved the customer experience but also empowered agents to step in seamlessly when needed, ensuring expert-level support every time.
These outcomes reflect strategic AI deployment rather than tactical cost cutting. All three companies invested in automation that strengthened customer relationships while delivering operational efficiency. Their success validates the compound interest approach to AI pricing.
The results speak to executive confidence as much as customer satisfaction. When AI delivers measurable improvements in both efficiency metrics and relationship indicators, leaders can confidently scale their investment knowing returns will compound rather than plateau.
Strategic implications for leaders
Gladly's pricing philosophy addresses the competing priorities facing customer service executives across different organizational levels.
CX leaders gain confidence that automation enhances rather than undermines their customer satisfaction metrics. No longer must they choose between efficiency and empathy—the pricing model rewards both outcomes equally.
CFOs and COOs receive ROI they can measure and defend. Instead of vanity metrics like containment rates, they track outcomes that directly impact business performance: faster resolution times, higher customer satisfaction, and measurable productivity gains across their service organization.
Support agents experience AI as empowerment rather than replacement. Assisted conversations provide context, recommendations, and next-best actions that make every conversation more effective and satisfying.
This alignment across organizational levels creates sustainable change rather than temporary cost reduction. When everyone benefits from better outcomes, adoption accelerates and results compound.
The future beyond containment
The customer service industry stands at an inflection point. Traditional containment-based AI will increasingly feel antiquated as customers demand more sophisticated, relationship-aware experiences.
Outcomes velocity will replace containment as the key performance indicator. Success will be measured by how quickly and confidently customers achieve their goals, not by how effectively they're kept away from human support.
Gladly leads this transformation with pricing that rewards the outcomes that matter: customer trust earned, problems solved efficiently, and relationships strengthened through every conversation. This approach creates competitive advantage through superior customer experience rather than mere cost reduction.
Organizations that embrace this philosophy today will build insurmountable advantages in customer loyalty, operational efficiency, and market positioning. Those that cling to containment-based thinking will find themselves fighting yesterday's war with tomorrow's customers.
Choose outcomes that compound
The choice facing customer service leaders is clear: invest in AI that builds walls around your support team, or invest in AI that builds bridges to stronger customer relationships.
Gladly's Resolutions + Assists pricing model aligns every incentive with outcomes that compound over time. Your AI investment grows more valuable through use, creating a strategic asset rather than a tactical cost center.
Don't settle for containment metrics that plateau over time. Choose outcomes that compound into competitive advantage, customer loyalty, and sustainable business growth.
Experience the difference with a personalized demo of Gladly's AI platform, or join our upcoming webinar to see how leading brands are building trust while scaling efficiency.
Don't settle for containment. Choose outcomes that compound.
Experience the difference with Gladly AI
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