Customer service is a tricky one. It's ripe for an AI takeover, but 20 million people worldwide work in the industry. 95% of the industry is salaries. There is a lot of collateral damage there. Millions of jobs will vanish and not everyone can be re-trained. And yet, as anyone who has experienced customer service in 2025 can testify: it's pretty lousy. Frustrating. Annoying. Expensive. And how often do your queries, questions and complaints actually get answered?In this episode of Thinking on Paper, Brian Kenny, MOMNTUM’s co-founder, explains why today’s support systems are broken, and how building from first principles with AI can actually make customer service feel human again. And the results are staggering: MOMNTUM’s AI customer service agent Laila solves 86% of cases without handoff to a humans. Early signals also flash a potential 4,000% ROI. The future of more human and successful customer service is less humans and more AI. But at what cost?You'll Learn:
- Why slapping bots on old workflows makes service worse
- How Laila spans phone, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and Messenger
- Where AI can be trusted now and where it shouldn’t be
- What metrics really matter (hint: it’s not CSAT)
- The new rules of trust, disclosure, and human escalation
Please enjoy the show.
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CHAPTERS
(00:00) Why customer service is broken
(03:30) What a modern support platform should look like
(06:35) Using AI to make service feel personal
(09:29) The data + privacy question
(11:26) The only success metrics that really matter
(15:09) Can machines create an emotional connection?
(18:16) The real limits of today’s systems (and what Laila can’t do yet)
(22:39) Where customer experience is headed next
(34:22) What should humans be?
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Learn more on Momntum and Laila
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