Openai spoke to the world last week about internal workplace tools. Since then, the market has been shaky about whether AI startups will one day compete with the SaaS industry for their own software tools.
So, at Openai's Big Devday Conference on Monday, I headed over to Scotty Huhn's presentation. ScottyHuhn is part of Openai's team that builds tools that will help its sales, customer success and operations teams work more effectively.
Huhn walked the packed crowd through three Openai software tools: GTM Assistant, Openhouse and Support Agent.
He revealed that these are internal tools at the moment, but after the presentation he was asked if Openai would release them as software products in the future. He dodged the question mostly by saying it was still very early on.
Openai is not the first company to start selling internal tools to develop into other businesses. Famous workplace chat giant slack Previously he was a game developer called Tiny Speck. We have spun messaging tools into a full-fledged business (Salesforce purchased Slack in 2020 for nearly $30 billion).
Huhn also pointed out in his presentation and later comments that Openai is open-minded about the build and buy decisions when it comes to software at work. If there's a better tool to buy, Openai will do it, he said.
Huhn also said Openai uses Sales Cloud, Salesforce's customer-related management software, as the “source of truth” for startup sales teams. Openai uses Workday, Slack for Internal Communication and Databricks for HR information, and uses it for important data warehousing services, according to his presentation and comments.
GTM Assistant
Openai's Scotty Huhn will show off his startup's GTM assistant software tools on December Alistair Barr/Business Insider
The first internal tool Huhn explained was Openai's GTM assistant. This helps startups to market sales teams work more efficiently.
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He said some of the skills distilled for this tool came from a talented human sales employee called Sophie.
This tool will help you plan for your staff to meet potential clients, customer demos and follow-up after these touchpoints.
Openai's Scotty Huhn explains the startup's GTM assistant software tools on San Francisco's December Alistair Barr/Business Insider
Another real human employee at OpenAI has developed around 100 customer demos, and startups have used these to train GTM assistant tools to create better demos. Today, this knowledge is spreading among a wider team, counting over 400 numbers, Huhn explained.
What's missing can be called by employees and come back into the system and be constantly improved, he added.
Open House
Openai's Scotty Huhn explains the startup's OpenhouseHR software tools on December in San Francisco Alistair Barr/Business Insider
Next up is Openhouse, an internal HR tool that uses existing workplace software such as Slack and Workday to help employees connect better with each other and keep up with company policies and other information.
Openai's Scotty Huhn explains the startup's OpenhouseHR software tools on December in San Francisco Alistair Barr/Business Insider
In one example, Huhn shared a recent sales trip to New York. He used Openhouse to ask if a colleague there knew about the clients and topic areas related to his upcoming meetings.
Openhouse suggested four or five staff members, and Huhn reached out to certain people who helped him prepare better.
Support Agent
The charts presented during a presentation at Openai's Date Conference in San Francisco Alistair Barr/Business Insider
The last tool Huhn discussed is the support agent, which makes Openai's customer support operations more efficient.
He has shown a chart of customer support tickets over the past year or so. There was a huge surge in the spring as Openai introduced a new Image Generation tool and usage surged. Interestingly, according to the charts, there have been another big spike in recent weeks.
Openai's Scotty Huhn explains the startup support agent software tools on San Francisco's December Alistair Barr/Business Insider
This tool has improved the deflection rate of OpenAI support tickets. This measures the number of customer requests that are dealt with quickly and easily.
According to Data Huhn shared during the presentation, customer questions have been answered more and positive reviews have risen considerably.
This tool helped to incorporate open alliance standards and knowledge into customer support operations. This improves the system over time, in part by taking interactions and finally returning to the evaluation process.
“Find your Sophie.”
Huhn ended up using AI in general to market his audience to improve his operations.
Rather than selling these specific internal tools, we encouraged developers to use OpenAI's AgentKit service to build their own agents.
He highlighted that OpenAI's distilled skills into its own AI tools ultimately came from startup employees, including its talented sales staff, Sophie.
“Find your Sophie,” Hun said.
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