Forethought vs Helpshift

Forethought

Forethought's flagship capability uses generative AI to automatically resolve customer support tickets without human intervention. When a ticket arrives, the AI analyzes the customer's message using advanced natural language processing to understand the underlying intent and context. It then searches the company's knowledge base, historical ticket data, and product documentation to gather relevant information before generating a personalized, accurate response. The system assigns confidence scores to each automated resolution—high-confidence responses are sent automatically, while lower-confidence tickets are escalated to human agents with suggested responses. The AI continuously learns from agent feedback, customer satisfaction ratings, and resolution outcomes, improving accuracy over time. This capability is particularly effective for common inquiries like password resets, order status checks, account questions, and basic troubleshooting, enabling 24/7 support without additional headcount. Reduces manual ticket handling by 50-70% while improving first-contact resolution rates and enabling round-the-clock customer support

✓ Reduces manual ticket handling by 50-70% while improving first-contact resolution rates and enabling round-the-clock customer support

Helpshift

Helpshift's intelligent chatbot system leverages advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand customer queries in real-time and provide accurate, contextual responses. The chatbots are trained on your specific knowledge base, product documentation, and historical support interactions, enabling them to handle everything from simple FAQs to complex troubleshooting scenarios. The system continuously learns from each interaction, improving its accuracy over time and adapting to new products, features, and common issues as they emerge. Unlike basic rule-based chatbots, Helpshift's AI understands intent and context, allowing it to handle variations in how customers phrase questions and provide personalized responses based on user history and behavior patterns. Reduces support ticket volume by up to 40% while providing instant 24/7 customer assistance without increasing headcount.

✓ Reduces support ticket volume by up to 40% while providing instant 24/7 customer assistance without increasing headcount

Forethought

Forethought's intelligent routing engine automatically categorizes incoming support tickets by issue type, priority level, product area, and required expertise, then routes them to the most appropriate agent or team. The system uses machine learning trained on historical ticket data to understand which agents are best suited for specific issue types based on past resolution times, customer satisfaction scores, and expertise areas. It also considers real-time factors like agent availability, current workload, and shift schedules to optimize routing decisions. For complex tickets requiring specialized knowledge, the system can identify subject matter experts and route accordingly. The routing logic is fully customizable, allowing support managers to define rules, priorities, and escalation paths that align with their organizational structure and SLAs. Decreases average resolution time by ensuring tickets reach the right agent faster, improving both customer satisfaction and agent efficiency

✓ Decreases average resolution time by ensuring tickets reach the right agent faster, improving both customer satisfaction and agent efficiency

Helpshift

The Helpshift SDK integrates directly into iOS, Android, and web applications, creating a native messaging experience that feels like a natural extension of your product rather than an external support tool. This deep integration allows customers to initiate support conversations, attach screenshots, share device information automatically, and receive push notifications for agent responses—all without leaving your app. The SDK is lightweight, optimized for performance, and designed to minimize impact on app size and battery consumption. It supports rich media including images, videos, and file attachments, and can be fully customized to match your brand's visual identity with custom colors, fonts, and messaging styles. Increases customer engagement with support by 3x compared to traditional email support while reducing abandonment rates.

✓ Increases customer engagement with support by 3x compared to traditional email support while reducing abandonment rates

Forethought

For tickets that require human intervention, Forethought generates contextually relevant response suggestions that agents can use, modify, or reject. The AI analyzes the customer's inquiry, searches relevant knowledge base articles and historical similar tickets, and generates 1-3 response options tailored to the specific situation. Suggestions include appropriate greetings, accurate information addressing the customer's question, relevant links to self-service resources, and professional closings. Agents see these suggestions directly in their helpdesk interface, allowing them to respond with a single click or quickly edit the suggestion before sending. The system learns from agent acceptance patterns and modifications, continuously improving suggestion quality. This feature is particularly valuable for maintaining consistent tone and messaging across large support teams while significantly accelerating response times. Enables agents to respond 3-5x faster while maintaining consistent quality, tone, and accuracy across all customer interactions

✓ Enables agents to respond 3-5x faster while maintaining consistent quality, tone, and accuracy across all customer interactions

Helpshift

Helpshift's smart routing engine automatically analyzes incoming support requests using AI to determine the optimal handling path. The system considers multiple factors including issue type, customer sentiment, language, VIP status, agent expertise, current workload, and historical resolution data to route each ticket to the agent most likely to resolve it quickly and effectively. For issues that can be handled automatically, the system routes to AI bots; for complex matters requiring human expertise, it identifies the best-qualified available agent. The routing logic is fully customizable through visual workflow builders, allowing support managers to create sophisticated rules that reflect their team structure and business priorities. Reduces average handle time by 25% and improves first-contact resolution rates by matching issues with the right resources.

✓ Reduces average handle time by 25% and improves first-contact resolution rates by matching issues with the right resources

Forethought

Forethought deeply integrates with company knowledge bases, documentation systems, FAQs, and help centers to ground all AI responses in verified, accurate information. The platform connects via API or native integrations to popular knowledge management systems, indexing and understanding content to make it accessible for AI-powered responses. When processing tickets, the AI uses semantic search to find the most relevant articles and information, incorporating this content into both automated resolutions and agent suggestions. The system can also identify knowledge gaps—topics where customers frequently ask questions but no documentation exists—helping content teams prioritize article creation. This knowledge-grounded approach significantly reduces AI hallucinations and ensures customers receive accurate, consistent information regardless of which agent or automated system handles their inquiry. Improves response accuracy and consistency by grounding AI in verified company information while reducing hallucinations and incorrect responses

✓ Improves response accuracy and consistency by grounding AI in verified company information while reducing hallucinations and incorrect responses

Helpshift

The integrated knowledge management system allows support teams to create, organize, and maintain a comprehensive library of help articles, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and how-to content. The platform includes a powerful WYSIWYG editor for content creation, version control for tracking changes, and analytics that show which articles are most viewed and most effective at deflecting tickets. The knowledge base integrates seamlessly with the AI chatbot, which automatically suggests relevant articles to customers based on their queries. Content can be organized into categories and subcategories, tagged for easy discovery, and localized into multiple languages to support global customer bases. Enables self-service resolution for up to 60% of common issues while reducing repetitive inquiries to human agents.

✓ Enables self-service resolution for up to 60% of common issues while reducing repetitive inquiries to human agents

Forethought

Forethought provides unified support automation across all customer communication channels including email, live chat, social media platforms, messaging apps, and web forms. The platform normalizes incoming messages from different channels into a consistent format, applies the same AI-powered categorization and routing logic, and maintains conversation context when customers switch between channels. Agents see a unified inbox with full conversation history regardless of channel, eliminating the need to switch between different tools or lose context. Automated responses are formatted appropriately for each channel—concise for chat, more detailed for email—while maintaining consistent information and tone. This omnichannel approach ensures customers receive the same quality of support whether they reach out via Twitter, email, or live chat. Enables consistent, high-quality support experience across all customer touchpoints while reducing agent context-switching and improving efficiency

✓ Enables consistent, high-quality support experience across all customer touchpoints while reducing agent context-switching and improving efficiency

Helpshift

Helpshift provides comprehensive analytics that give support leaders complete visibility into their operations, team performance, and customer satisfaction trends. The dashboard includes real-time metrics on ticket volume, response times, resolution rates, CSAT scores, and agent productivity, along with historical trending to identify patterns and forecast staffing needs. Advanced reporting capabilities allow teams to create custom reports, schedule automated delivery to stakeholders, and drill down into specific segments by product, region, issue type, or customer cohort. The platform also includes AI-powered insights that automatically surface anomalies, identify emerging issues, and recommend optimizations to improve support efficiency. Provides actionable insights that help support leaders make data-driven decisions and demonstrate ROI to executives.

✓ Provides actionable insights that help support leaders make data-driven decisions and demonstrate ROI to executives

Forethought

Approach: Forethought automates the entire outbound prospecting workflow using AI. The platform identifies ideal customer profiles, enriches contact data from multiple sources, and generates personalized email sequences at scale. Sales teams can set targeting criteria and let the AI handle research, outreach, and follow-ups.

Outcome: 70% time savings on prospecting activities, 3x increase in qualified meetings booked, 50% improvement in email response rates through AI personalization.

Helpshift

Approach: Helpshift automates the entire outbound prospecting workflow using AI. The platform identifies ideal customer profiles, enriches contact data from multiple sources, and generates personalized email sequences at scale. Sales teams can set targeting criteria and let the AI handle research, outreach, and follow-ups.

Outcome: 70% time savings on prospecting activities, 3x increase in qualified meetings booked, 50% improvement in email response rates through AI personalization.

Forethought

Approach: Forethought uses AI to automatically qualify and score leads based on firmographic data, behavioral signals, and engagement patterns. The system continuously learns from conversion data to improve scoring accuracy and prioritize the highest-value opportunities.

Outcome: 45% increase in lead-to-opportunity conversion, 60% reduction in time spent on unqualified leads, 2x improvement in sales team productivity.

Helpshift

Approach: Helpshift uses AI to automatically qualify and score leads based on firmographic data, behavioral signals, and engagement patterns. The system continuously learns from conversion data to improve scoring accuracy and prioritize the highest-value opportunities.

Outcome: 45% increase in lead-to-opportunity conversion, 60% reduction in time spent on unqualified leads, 2x improvement in sales team productivity.