Forethought AI Review

In today’s world, customer experience is a crucial ingredient for success. In fact, Metrigy reveals that 65% of companies prioritize increasing their technology spend in 2023. In a Forbes publication, Bernard Marr, a renowned author and technological advisor, predicted that customer experience and personalization through social media and chatbots are core trends that will define customer experience in 2023.

One company that is helping businesses reach their personalization goals is Forethought. In this article, we will dive into Forethought’s features, pricing, and policies.

Forethought Overview

Forethought pursues one mission: To unlock human potential through artificial intelligence, starting with transforming customer service on the leading AI platform for customer-first experiences. 

In an interview with TechCrunch, Deon Nicholas, Forethought’s Co-Founder and CEO, revealed the premise upon which it all began. “When we spoke to the customers, we found out that the old generation of chat boxes were overpromised and under-delivered.” Spotting this problem, Deon Nicholas and Sami Ghoche developed Forethought in 2017 to help businesses provide better customer support experiences.

Forethought empowers businesses to provide customers with answers to questions they may have and helps employees streamline their workflow for better productivity. The platform is capable of understanding natural languages, thanks to its training on NPL models and knowledge-based articles. For businesses with existing customer support frameworks, Forethought allows them to integrate the platform into their systems without any need to overhaul their existing setups. 

In December 2018, Forethought raised $65 million on Series C funding and has raised $92 million altogether since its founding.

• Established: 2017
• Founder: Deon Nicholas and Sami Ghoche
• Location: California, United States

Notable Features

Forethought provides several features that give it uniqueness when compared to other alternatives in the market. Let’s dig in.

1. Generative AI Technology 

Forethought helps businesses transform their customer support services by replacing the traditional robotic input-output flow with a more human feel. 

The platform uses natural language processing technology to interpret customers’ queries and automatically provides appropriate answers using generative AI technology.  Forethought can understand and interpret sentence structure, synonyms, and tone unlike traditional chat boxes. 

To ensure that the responses are more accurate and tailored to each company, Forethought allows subscribers to fine-tune its models on historical ticket data. Once a customer sends in a query, the AI algorithm automatically extracts the most appropriate answer from millions of documents and cases. When showing the result, Forethought can keep the conversational tone.

2. Ticket characteristics prediction

The primary method Forethought uses to optimize its responses to each user is by spotting sentiments and emotions behind the query. In addition, the algorithms classify support cases into various priority levels, intent, and language. With the grouping done, support agents can respond to each query in order of urgency.

Forethought further helps to detect and eliminate spam and repetitive queries. The Triage Quickstart also allows users to create custom tags and classifiers to group tickets for more personalized responses. 

3. AI Assistant for Agents

Besides providing automatic responses to customers, Forethought helps companies identify the loopholes in their existing customer support workflows. The tool studies past support interactions and recommends workflows that can be used to improve self-service support and boost deflection rates. 

Individuals can track workflows’ effectiveness and get insights into better ways to adjust based on performance. Forethought further helps companies spot new trends and topics common to their audience. Businesses can also take a peep into their users’ intent and get information from new clusters to optimize the customer experience.

As managers receive these insights, they can share them with other support team members and employees across departments.

4. Excellent Security

Security-wise, Forethought provides several infrastructures to maintain an excellent performance. The company ensures it meets ximolance standards, by undergoing periodic auditing to ensure its activities are compliant with the ISO 27001 and SOC 2 standards. Forethought encrypts data when at rest and in transit using various tools. 

The company also ensures that it meets the Data Processing Agreement (DPA) requirement of the GDPR and CCPA. GDPR is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation that regulates how organizations handle the personal information of EU residents and gives them certain rights and choices. At the same time, CCPA is the California Consumer Privacy Act that regulates how organizations handle the personal information of California residents. 

5. Insightful analytics

Forethought provides omni-channel platforms for sending and receiving seamlessly, thanks to the ZenDesk Sunshine integration. Customer agents can automate email support by setting up trigger actions and customizable responses. 

The agent’s dashboard also orderly presents current existing cases, past tickets with similar details, and other information the agents will need to resolve each case quickly. Forethought further empowers support representatives to search any knowledge base or website right within the help desk and get relevant, AI-powered answers. This feature helps to reduce the time it takes to resolve issues.

Forethought Integrations

 Forethought’s unique design allows users to integrate the platform into their existing customer service applications. The platform integrates seamlessly with top helpdesk and CRM platforms, including ZenDesk, SalesForce, Servicenow, and Customer. The integrations with AWS, Talkdesk, and DialPad further empower companies to automate their cloud-based customer support platforms.

Plans and Pricing

Like many other companies in the automated customer service SaaS niche, Forethought provides its services following a subscription model. Subscribers pay specific prices at pre-stated intervals (typically monthly or yearly) to get access to its service. 

ThoughtSpot sales agent creates unique plans for each user after a thorough conversation with the new subscribers about their needs and the volume of services they need. The plans are further divided into the standard and the premier subscriptions.

Among other benefits, premier subscribers get 24/7 support and less than one hour wait time to receive responses to their emails when they encounter a critical challenge. On the other hand, standard subscribers have to wait up to four business hours to receive a response from customer support when the same challenges with their service.

Terms and Policies

Forethought’s terms and condition document binds users to the company and guides how both parties (Forethought Technologies, Inc., and the user) can safely use the platform. Forethought stores your data and shares it with third parties following various data security standards as you interact with the platform. The company also provides various policies to guide how it uses customer data, including the privacy policy, cookie declaration, and compliance documents. 

Altogether, these documents highlight Forethought’s commitment to protecting users’ rights and choices about their personal information. The company may share your personal information with third-party service providers, business partners, or law enforcement whenever necessary. If you have any concerns about the privacy policy and standards, Forethought allows you to reach out to the data protection officer to learn more about its commitment to customer data protection. 

Customer Support

Forethought provides a vast help center where users can find numerous self-help resources whenever they need them. The help center comprises the announcement page, where Forethought typically posts news updates and recent additions to the platform’s functionality. 

The help center also hosts the – Forethought Products – section, which guides users on navigating and optimizing functionalities efficiently. The Help Desk section further provides how-to guides for installing and setting up the Zendesk and Salesforce integrations. In addition, Forethought has an FAQ section where it discusses several likely questions or challenges customers may have and prefers excellent solutions to each question. 

Besides the self-help materials, Forethought further provides several channels where users can get expert help from a customer support agent. The live chat widget is the first point of contact, providing automated responses to users’ queries. You can get in contact with a support agent by sending your messages to designated emails:

• Email info@forethought.ai to discuss partnership opportunities and get general information about the platform.
• Send a message to press@forethought.ai to share your experience about how AI is revolutionizing your AI experience.
• Contact sales@forethought.ai to schedule a demo and learn more about how the platform can help improve customer service in your particular use case. 

The typical response time varies with the urgency of the situation and the type of plan you are subscribed to. The highest priority cases are those that involve a serious problem in the user’s production systems, causing a service outage. For such cases, the average response is about four business hours, while the premier subscribers get 24/7 support and up to one hour (max) wait time to get a response from an agent. 

On the other extreme, queries involving requests for new features, with no particular challenge with the Forethought services, have the least priority. You can expect responses within five days and within business hours. Forethought’s business hours are between Monday and Friday, 8 am – 5 pm PST.

Final Words

Like many other AI support platforms, Forethought provides a comprehensive suite of features that helps manage customers’ queries automatically. With its advanced AI technology, Forethought takes its services further by detecting sentiments and using them to generate personalized and accurate responses. Customer agents also get more insightful recommendations as they use the platform.  

If you are still unsure about whether Forethought can provide excellent solutions for your company’s needs, you may contact Forethought’s sales or customer representative to book a demo.

Contributors: Jude ENOSEGBE (Technical Writer), Olumide OKESIPE (Graphics Designer)