Momentum Episode 29:
Jotform AI Agents: The Future of Customer Service with Aytekin Tank

What happens when powerful forms meet powerful AI? Let's find out in this special episode where we'll be interviewing Jotform's founder and CEO Aytekin Tank on the revolutionary new product Jotform AI Agents. Stay tuned to learn all about what Jotform AI Agents are, how they came to be, and how they transform the future of customer service. Welcome to Momentum, a podcast by Jotform where we talk about technology, productivity tips, insights, and best practices that help us move forward in business and in life. Let's get started, three, two, one.

Aytekin, welcome back to the show. It's been a while, how are you?

Hey Elliot, it's been a while. I'm doing great. It has been an incredible week. We just launched Jotform AI Agents and the excitement and adrenaline rush actually turned into tiredness the next day. I felt so tired even though I didn't do much, just gave a speech. It was a great launch event.

Yeah, you have all that adrenaline leading up to the launch. You gave a speech, did a lot of podcasts, and shepherded the entire process for a long time. The team was emailing you at 2 a.m. making sure everything was working perfectly. The marketing and engineering teams did an amazing job. It was really an all-hands effort here at Jotform, which is cool to see us pull something like this off.

Let's take a step back. The big news, which we kind of spoiled already, is that Jotform AI Agents just launched. This is arguably one of Jotform's biggest launches ever. How do you feel now that we're actually at launch week and the product is live? This is the culmination of so much hard work.

I feel both excitement and relief. We've been working on this product for one and a half years and have been waiting for this state for a long time. We planned to release it in November but kept finding great ideas to build, so we postponed it to February. I'm glad we did because we accomplished so much during that time.

The relief comes from the fact that launches are always risky because things can go wrong when people experience the product for the first time. We had 200,000 people visit the product and create over 10,000 AI agents. Everything went smoothly with no problems or broken features, making it a great launch.

This is still day one. We want to do so much more but had to get to this point first. Now that it's released and many people are using it, we can focus on the next things. Those three months we pushed back allowed us to get beta users and testers to refine and make sure everything was good to go for launch.

Before launch, we didn't have as many channels as we do now. We launched with eight channels including phone agent, Messenger, WhatsApp, chatbots, and kiosk mode. Wherever you need to talk to your customers, you can have your AI agent right there. You train your agent once and deploy it on many platforms like your website or phone number so people can get answers 24/7.

We were waiting for approval from Meta for the Messenger platform until the last moment. We were worried about launching without it, but right before launch, we got approval and were able to release it with the product. This speaks to the virtue of patience, not rushing to be first but making sure the product is robust and well developed.

For listeners who might not be aware, can you give a high-level overview of what AI agents are in general and in Jotform's terms, who they're for and how they fit into our platform ecosystem?

AI agents are basically AI that has agency. Unlike regular AI products like ChatGPT that give you answers, AI agents can actually work for you. They can do jobs while you are asleep or away. There are three types of AI agents: conversational AI agents, multi-agent platforms, and workflow automation AI agents.

Conversational AI agents can talk on your behalf. Jotform AI agents are a great example. You can train your AI agent to work on your website 24/7 to answer customers, take appointments, fill out forms, take payments, and more without your involvement. They have some agency and can make decisions and guide users.

Multi-agent platforms like Crew.com have different specialized AI agents working together, for example, one for keyword research, another for content ideas, and another for writing articles. You orchestrate these agents to create the end product.

Workflow automation AI agents handle backend tasks like spam and fraud detection. For example, Jotform uses AI agents to constantly review users and emails for spam and phishing. These agents work behind the scenes doing their tasks.

We are mostly focused on conversational AI agents. This is going to be the year of AI agents because people are discovering they can use agents everywhere. Small businesses, healthcare, nonprofits, and education can hire AI agents to do tasks like accounting, legal, HR, customer service, appointment taking, and sales at a fraction of the cost of full-time employees.

This doesn't replace humans because small businesses often don't have the resources to hire people anyway. AI agents enable small businesses to flourish and grow faster with fewer resources. Once they grow, they will hire more people. AI agents are going to produce more jobs than they take.

Jotform has always been the product for small businesses with a free, fully functional SaaS product that anyone can use. This matches well with Jotform's culture and mission to help small businesses become successful. AI agents are the next step on that journey.

We are in a transformative era of AI. The term AI agent wasn't common a couple of years ago but now it's everywhere. This is the right time to be in the market. AI agents help companies scale and grow, which is an important perspective.

What inspired this version of AI implementation? It's not the low-hanging fruit like AI generating forms. We went straight to a robust, comprehensive AI agent concept. Can you share the story behind that?

The idea seemed obvious in hindsight but didn't occur to us initially. We started the AI journey in 2023 during a week-long hackathon where teams tried different technologies and ideas. Multiple teams came up with the idea of filling out forms using AI because forms are boring but conversations are natural and fun.

We started with three AI engineers and grew the project by adding more teams. We released a beta version quickly to see if people liked it. People used it and retention rates were good, so we doubled down and grew the team to about 30 teams with 200 people working on it.

We discovered that most users weren't using it to fill out forms but for customer service chatbots on websites. Ninety percent used it for customer service and only ten percent for forms. We realized there was a need for a customer service product and doubled down on that while keeping form features important.

We started using our own AI agents for customer service on Jotform pages and discovered new features and improvements. We interviewed 45 beta users and learned a lot. They talked about answering pre-sales questions and teaching people about their products, not just forms.

This was a lesson that sometimes products evolve differently than expected. We listen to customers and users and developed additional features to make it a better customer service product. The launch had great excitement with 200,000 visitors and 10,000 agents created.

The inflection point was when we pivoted to customer service after realizing how users were using the product. We leaned into that and listened to the end users, which drives our product development.

What is the ultimate vision for AI agents? How do you see them transforming how people use Jotform moving forward?

There's an AI revolution going on that will change everything, similar to the invention of the personal computer, the internet, and mobile technology. This is the fourth biggest revolution in my lifetime and I'm glad to be part of it with a great team.

Every organization in the world can have their own AI agents. People are used to AI now. My kids use ChatGPT for homework instead of asking me. When I was a kid, I had to ask older people or go to the library. Today, information is at our fingertips and accessible by speaking to AI.

AI is now a consumer product. Every revolution starts with consumer products and then businesses adopt it. You can talk to ChatGPT but you can't talk to the AI of the businesses you work with yet. Soon, every business will have AI agents you can talk to online, like a receptionist.

You won't wait on hold for 45 minutes on a phone line but talk directly to an AI agent who can answer questions, make appointments, and help you buy things easily. That's the future we imagine and want to be part of by building products to accomplish that.

It's much bigger than customer service or filling forms. After customer service, AI agents could handle sales, presentations, and even live demos over Zoom where you can ask questions and the AI shows you how to do things. We are working on these ideas but currently focused on what we have.

We are still missing many pieces and working on them, but we have a good product with great retention and usage rates. In the coming months, expect new additions and updates to our AI agents, though I want to keep some surprises.

This is huge and positions us prominently in an industry still in its infancy. AI agents are the stopgap between consumers and businesses, the next evolution of AI. Up to 30 teams worked on this, which is different for Jotform and shows how much of a priority it was.

What motivated the decision to have so many people and teams working together on this? How did you coordinate and oversee such a large effort?

The whole engineering team is working on this. We weren't planning such a huge team but the project grew as we needed more features. Jotform usually has small independent teams focused on specific areas, but this project required many teams to add integrations, channels, and features.

Everyone wanted to work on AI and teams asked how they could join. Eventually, there were no teams left to add. Managing this large team is possible because teams are independent with their own leads, designers, and decision-making authority.

We have weekly review meetings where I meet with all 30 teams for 15 minutes to give feedback and see progress. We also have demo days every Friday where teams present what they've accomplished. This keeps everyone organized and functioning cohesively despite working separately.

Having a large beta program was important to ensure a smooth launch with no product issues. By launch, we had 1,000 active users generating 1,000 conversations daily with AI agents, proving the product was ready.

It was surreal to see every team and person at Jotform working on AI agents and presenting at demo days. We already have 1,000 users which some companies would be happy to have for a new product. The sense of unification and scale was incredible.

What challenges did you run into during development after over a year of work and pivoting?

Two main challenges: phone voice agents and conversational form filling. Voice agents are hard because of many moving parts like speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion that must happen fast for natural conversation. We are improving but not fully satisfied yet.

Filling out forms conversationally is hard, especially on the phone, like getting email addresses correctly. People mistype emails even on regular forms. We tested many ideas but challenges are fun because solving them feels rewarding. Building a great product takes time and this is just day one.

What makes Jotform AI agents different is the friendly personality we gave them. Unlike other products with robotic icons, our AI agents have faces and friendly voices. We want people to feel like they are talking to a warm, friendly person, which is important in customer service to feel taken care of.

I remember a demo day last year where you emphasized personality, approachability, and friendliness of AI agents. This is refreshing and a key piece of the product. It isn't a bland corporate chatbot but has a friendly aspect that makes customer service and form filling easier and more fun.

What do you think will surprise people most about Jotform AI agents when they try them?

My favorite feature is the teacher agent section where you can have one-on-one conversations with your AI agent, just like training an employee. You spend time telling them about your culture, answering their questions, and helping them learn. This makes training the AI agent fun and engaging.

When you go to teach your agent, it greets you warmly and makes the experience enjoyable, like a game drawing you in. People even role-play conversations like handling angry customers to train their agents. Customers love this experience and it makes the product fun to use.

You get out what you put in, like with a new employee. Spending time training your AI agent improves its performance. Some users will take pride in having a well-trained AI agent that talks just like they want. This gamified approach is a great feature to highlight.

Beyond customer service, AI agents can be used for appointments, form filling, and many other tasks. We created 7,000 AI agent templates based on common form use cases. Anything you manually do with customers today could potentially be done by AI agents.

This includes providing recommendations, training customers about products, giving presentations, and managing multi-step processes. We are starting with customer service to get it right before expanding to other areas. Releasing the product is a big milestone that brings valuable user feedback.

For example, we added Google Calendar integration at launch but received 30 more requests for calendar integrations on launch day alone. The team is working on these features based on user feedback. Jotform has 30 million users who constantly ask for new features, so the next pieces come from them.

We prefer to release features when they are ready so users can use them immediately rather than pre-announcing far in advance. Anything you do today with customers can be accomplished with AI agents, and that's how we imagine the future.

It's going to be an exciting journey and this is just the first day.

If you haven't tried Jotform AI agents yet, it's free and easy. We have an agent builder where you can talk to and teach your agent. Just go to jotform.com/ai-agents and start building your first AI agent in seconds with a few clicks. You're going to love it.

Thank you everyone for tuning in and thank you Aytekin for your time. Until the next show, we'll see everybody later.