Origin Story

Nine months ago, we set out to build an AI CX agent (yup, another AI agent!) that would integrate seamlessly with Groove. It felt like the natural next layer of automation our customers had been asking for.

Cover Image for Origin Story

Nine months ago, we set out to build an AI CX agent (yup, another AI agent!) that would integrate seamlessly with Groove. It felt like the natural next layer of automation our customers had been asking for.

After sharing the idea with Groove customers, hundreds of responses flood in, all saying the same thing:

"We need an AI customer support agent."

origin story

So, we got to work.

200+ customer calls later (before writing a line of code), I discovered that our solution went far beyond Groove users.

Users of Zendesk, Freshworks, Salesforce, and others wanted this exact same thing: A simple yet powerful AI CX agent that could integrate directly into their existing help desk and work alongside their tech-stack.

We took this early verbal feedback, and built our a working prototype. It was platform agnostic, extremely easy to use, and had the power of enterprise AI agent solutions.

And then we hit a roadblock.

We were building the next gen of AI CX Agents, but the output was disappointing.

We quickly discovered the success of our AI agent depended entirely on its input: good data leads to good results, bad data leads to errors.Plugging in our knowledge base, website, and internal docs was helpful but not enough. We were still getting hallucinations and errors, like all the other 'off the shelf' AI agent chatbots.

To unlock Helply’s potential, we needed to understand the questions our customers were asking daily, and we needed a system that would keep our AI agent up-to-date in real-time.

That's when we built Knowledge Bridge.

origin story

Knowledge Bridge analyze customer converations and compares them against your knowledge base, help docs, and other training material to identify gaps in your knowledge. Knowing what was missing allowed us to quickly correct errors and clean up our surprisingly messy knowledge base (gaps we had no idea existed until our tool helped us discover them).

That was stage 1.

Stage 2 meant taking the next logical step: filling the gaps in your knowledge base with a human-in-the-loop system, allowing you to review and approve entries to ensure accuracy.

This continuous refinement fuels Helply with accurate, up-to-date insights, making your knowledge base and help articles more robust while powering your AI agent to deliver precise, consistent support.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Helply integrates seamlessly into your help desk—whether Zendesk, Freshworks, Groove, or another platform.
  2. You choose the resources to train it on, such as your knowledge base, email templates, or macros, giving your AI agent a strong baseline.
  3. With one click, you run a customer support audit. This generates a knowledge score and highlights gaps in your AI's understanding.
  4. Helply generates Q&A automatically for common questions based on past replies. For anything else, you can manually add missing information.
  5. Once updated, your AI agent improves, and your knowledge score rises.

The result?

A fully optimized AI agent ready to handle tier 1 support on autopilot.

Before Knowledge Bridge, our AI agent had a 43.4% auto-resolution rate. After implementing it, we reached 81.2%—and we’re still improving.

With our Knowledge Bridge prototype in place, we began a series of customer demos. And the response validated our vision: Knowledge Bridge wasn't just a 'nice to have', it was a 'NEED to have.'

Conversation after conversation we heard the same thing: we need this.

That kind of feedback made us feel confident we were moving in the right direction, but something still felt off. As part of our experimental + investigative approach to building the next gen AI CX agent, we kept an open mind about who could benefit from Helply...

...but after hundreds of customer calls, it became clear that to be the best in class AI CX agent solution, we had to niche down.

Ecomm companies have an entirely different set of needs than digital service providers. And both are wildly different than the needs of SaaS and tech.

The deeper you drill into any specific niche, the more apparant these differentiations become -- and the greater the need to focus your efforts on just ONE (even if it means saying no to hundreds or thousands of customers).

But where to focus?

Fortunately, that decision was easy:

I've been 'building in public' for the last decade. Many people say I pioneered 'radical transparency blogging' for startups, because I shared my financials so openly.

origin story

(side note: we're doing the same thing with Helply -- you can view our public Growth Dashboard here) 👇

My newsletter is called Zero to $10M ARR. It's a weekly newsletter dedicated to helping SaaS and tech companies scale to $10 million in recurring revenue. We have 130,000 subscribers, and you guessed it -- many are in that niche.

I also post 5 days a week on Linkedin -- all about growing a profitable, lean startup.

Naturally, I've grown an audience of SaaS and tech founders.

In addition, many (though not all) Groove customers are in this niche as well. And our most excited customers have been in the SaaS and Tech space.

Through a process of continual development and working in public, we decided to narrow our focus where it felt like it made most sense:

SaaS and Tech.

Right now, we're working on adding advanced AI features, including: workflows, automations, and enterprise-grade security. Helply now supports complex processes, integrates deeply with tools SaaS and tech companies already rely on, and meets the highest security standards. These additions position Helply as the ultimate AI-powered support solution for growing SaaS and tech companies.

Learn more about the Helply Origin story here:

What’s Next?

We’re now laser-focused on building advanced features for SaaS and tech companies, including workflows, automations, and enterprise-grade security. These updates ensure Helply isn’t just another chatbot—it’s the ultimate AI-powered support solution for growing SaaS and tech businesses.

If you’re looking for a way to scale your support operations without scaling costs, Helply is for you. We’re currently running a pilot program, and spots are limited. Join the waitlist today to get early access.

Click here to sign up for early access.