"Agency is one of those wonderful, prismatic words with refracting meanings. It can refer to an agency that handles PR, books travel, or manages talent-and by extension, to agents themselves, from human talent scouts to the AI agents these days popping up everywhere in tech. But most often, I use it to describe something more fundamental: having agency in situations, the ability to shape outcomes rather than just responding to them."
""That's the definition we use," he said. "Basically, I think that as AI moves into the future, the only thing left for humans to improve on is our agency. AI shouldn't have agency. We're the ones who are going to have agency." It's perhaps a funny thing to say for an entrepreneur who's literally making AI agents to automate customer service, drawing data from emails, Slack, support tickets, and product usage to give companies a full picture of individual customers."
""If we want to build businesses in the future and for the future, we need to be leveraging AI to manage customer experiences, from beginning to end," said Torres, who's fast-talking and candid. "So, that's my challenge: How do I build a platform that teaches companies to switch to AI, and customers to start preferring AI interactions? That's the journey we're on.""
Agency denotes the ability to shape outcomes rather than merely respond. Elias Torres, cofounder and CEO of agentic AI customer service startup Agency, defines agency as a human attribute that AI should not possess. His company builds AI agents that automate customer service by drawing data from emails, Slack, support tickets, and product usage to create comprehensive customer profiles. The objective includes giving people back time and more options for how they spend their days while teaching companies to adopt AI and encouraging customers to prefer AI interactions. Competition in the space includes companies like Sierra and Decagon. Torres previously sold Drift to Vista for $1.2 billion in 2021 and immigrated from Nicaragua at 17.
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