Buyers do not shop on your schedule. They land on your site after hours, ask a question you did not anticipate, and disappear if the answer is not instant. For CX and revenue leaders, that reality is pushing a new question to the front of the stack: what happens when an AI agent becomes the first “person” a prospect meets?
In this CX Today case study, Nicole Willing sits down with Will Jones, GTM Associate at Attio, and Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer at Intercom, to unpack CRM vendor Attio’s deployment of Intercom’s AI agent, Fin, as an always-on sales development representative (SDR) for inbound engagement.
Jones is clear that this was not a “break glass” moment for a struggling motion. Attio already had a strong inbound engine, but the team saw buyer expectations shifting fast. Prospects increasingly want answers in real time, and the traditional pattern of form fill, wait, and follow-up leaves revenue sitting on the table. Fin offered a direct way to meet customers in the moment, with the speed and availability that modern journeys demand. As Jones says:
“We believe that AI agents are going to become table stakes on websites because quite frankly, prospects are coming and they’ve got used to these AI tools that give them instant answers now and they’re being less patient with getting information.”
One of the most practical takeaways is what changes operationally after launch. Jones describes how an AI agent can capture email addresses and then automate follow-ups when a prospect drops out mid-conversation. Instead of losing intent, the team gets a second chance to re-engage while the interest is still fresh. He also highlights the downstream value of conversation data: the questions prospects ask, the objections they raise, and the language they use can feed smarter landing pages, tighter positioning, and better enablement.
Adams zooms out to the bigger shift. In his view, AI is not just another interface layer like mobile or the web. It does work that used to require a person, which changes how teams allocate time and where expertise should live. When AI agents can share memory and pull from a single source of truth, handoffs become smoother and the “repeat yourself” problem shrinks.
Both guests share a pragmatic warning, that waiting is not a protection. It just gives competitors time to learn faster. To hear how Attio and Intercom are thinking about AI agents in customer journeys, watch the full interview.
