At home I have a 21-month-old daughter. So when I'm away, I'd rather fill every hour than come home a day later. So the three days were packed, and all centred around Ehandelskonferencen last Thursday.

Here's how the three days went.

Wednesday started at Odla.nu at 10:00. It’s on the way between my home and Copenhagen, so it only made sense to start there.

They’ve been a customer for about six months, and now they’re ready to get started with our AI Agents 2.0.

So the plan was simple: get their AI agent up and running before I left the building.

We went through their latest conversations together. Which questions come in again and again? Which ones can AI answer safely? And which ones should always go to a person?

When I left, their AI agent was live and handling 52% automatically, handing over ~30% to a human (defined business rule) and still needing help with the last ~20%. A pretty good start, and Rasmus and the team are now working on automating those remaining 20%.

At 14:30 I was at Build-A-Bear on Købmagergade. Same exercise, different questions.

And that’s one of the big learnings from the past months. While we build one system for our AI agents, all our customers use them differently. Different questions, different topics, different business rules. So we need to handle that.

But once it’s clear how the AI agents now work, that you can configure them to handle each topic differently, I get the same reaction from all our customers: That’s really easy!

Anyway, three hours later, their AI agent was live too.

That's really the part of the job that’s most fulfilling. Sitting at the same table as the customer and seeing their inbox get a little lighter before the day is over.

Fast forward a bit to Wednesday evening. Jimmy and I invited a short list of chosen guests to a VIP dinner at Köd on Vesterbrogade. 10 guests, partners and people we'd been wanting to talk to properly for a long time. Long dinners where nobody looks at their phone are rare. But this was one of them. And what I really liked was that it wasn’t a sales pitch from either side. Nobody was there to sell anything. Of course, we hope to inspire and build great connections and partnerships - but not to sell that evening. And I know for a fact that multiple people paired up and are helping each other now afterwards. Perfect!

Thursday was Ehandelskonferencen. The main event! Full day from 8 am sharp until late.

We didn't have a booth this year. Honestly, it doesn’t make sense for us. The price alone is like two months of ad spend for us right now…

Instead, Jimmy and I walked around and talked to almost every exhibitor, plus tons of partners and customers.

Honestly, I think we got more out of that than we would have from standing behind a table waiting for people to stop by. Plus, I like it so much more. I get to talk to lots more people and partners, and still walk away with a long list of people to connect with afterwards, both customers and partners.

And when I’m attending for the 10th time and walking around in my Herodesk Hoodie, it’s easy to talk to anyone.

It’s no secret that I’ve been lobbying to put customer service on the agenda at Ehandelskonferencen for a few years. It finally happened! And it was about time. I still don’t understand how such a central part of running a webshop (or any other business, for that matter) has been left out until now. But this year, I was granted a 25-minute speaking slot to focus on just that (good customer service) and invited one of our customers, Emil Nissen from Blandselvfrø, to join me on stage to talk about it.

At 11:45 I was on the Blue Stage doing just that.

More than 200 people were listening.

My message was simple: good customer service is about making things easy for the customer.

You'd think that goes without saying. But right now, the whole industry talks about AI agents as if they're the answer to everything. Put a bot in front of the customer, and the problem is solved…

Come-the-fuck-on… Let’s get just a little bit serious for a moment.

Yes, AI and AI agents are a big part of customer support today (as it should be), but there’s so much more to it if you really want to succeed in turning your customer support from a cost centre to a profit centre.

The figures I showed are worth thinking about. Exceeding customer expectations barely moves loyalty (how likely the customer is to buy more, buy again, and recommend your business). Solving the problem right away gives a small plus (.14x). Teaching the customer something new gives more (.86x).

But having to contact you several times about the same thing? That costs -2.52x in loyalty. Generic, impersonal service costs -.52x. Having to repeat information costs -.46x.

The “wow moments” matter less than you'd think. The friction matters a lot more!

AI agents are part of the answer. Just not the whole answer. You need to think about the customer journey from A-Z:

Then Emil took over and showed what it looks like in practice.

Blandselvfrø has gone from 1 to 10 markets in a few years. With 1 FTE in customer service. 30 hours a week.

They have a Trustscore of 4.8 !!!

They got there with clear processes all the way through the customer journey, data that guides their decisions, and AI where it makes sense: two-way translation, suggested replies, self-help, conversation analysis and automation.

No silver bullet. Just a lot of small things that make it easy for the customer.

The feedback afterwards was great. That message clearly hit home.

Thanks, Emil, for joining me on stage 🙏

Before wrapping it up at the conference, I got in contact with Trustpilot (integration incoming) and the four major carriers in Denmark (PostNord, GLS, DAO & Bring) to build deep integrations with all of them, too! (finally, some might say, but better late than never)

Thursday evening we went to a small e-commerce dinner. Again, no sales pitches, just a quick presentation round, as there, on purpose, were a lot of new faces for everyone. Another great occasion to meet new people, learn what they do in the industry and tell them about what we do.

Finally, Friday morning, I drove out to Houmann in northern Sealand. At 11:00 we sat down with their latest conversations, and by early afternoon their AI agent was live as well, automating everything related to returns, claims and order status/tracking. The way they run their business mandates that a lot of conversations should be handled by humans (again: different customers, different implementations), but this is another great starting point that we got to in just a few hours, and something we’ll keep expanding and improving together.

Three customers. Three AI agents live. Each with their own topics, and all three are continuing to work with them on their own.

That last part matters most to me. An AI agent isn't something you set up and forget. It's something the customer keeps building on.

Then I drove home Friday afternoon, tired but happy (and with a phone full of pictures and follow-up notes).

I managed to write exactly 0 lines of new code those three days, but it’s still worth it because we got to do so much new business instead.

Three big updates from Herodesk since last time:

And, as usual, a lot of smaller fixes and improvements based on your feedback. I honestly feel like our product has never been better than it is right now. That’s only confirmed by the feedback we got at the E-handelskonferencen. People (you!) are noticing the big leap we’ve taken (not least with the “Got Your Back”-Release), and we really appreciate it. Thanks!

Below are some of my favourite newsletters. So if you like this one, you should consider subscribing to these, too.