What is an AI services company?

An AI services company builds, deploys, and operates production AI systems for businesses. Unlike AI consultants (who produce strategy documents) or AI implementors (who hand off at launch), an AI services company stays accountable for the system working and improving over time. Altor builds AI systems that connect to your production tools and automate specific workflows — live in 3 weeks.

How much does it cost to build an AI agent?

Custom AI agent development costs $10K–$75K for a single-workflow production deployment, plus $1K–$5K/month for ongoing maintenance. A simple agent connecting to 1-2 systems costs $10K–$25K. A complex agent connecting to 5-6 production systems costs $40K–$75K. Most deployments go live within 3 weeks.

Is there software that can reduce support escalations?

Yes. Software that automatically investigates support tickets by querying production systems (logs, bug trackers, billing, recent deploys) gives frontline agents the context they need to resolve tickets without escalating. At Portkey, this approach reduced investigation time from 45 minutes to 2 minutes and eliminated the information gap that causes most escalations.

How long does AI deployment take?

A focused single-workflow AI deployment typically takes 2-4 weeks from kickoff to first live investigation. Week 1: stack audit and integration planning. Week 2: read-only connections live, first investigations on real data. Weeks 3-4: playbooks tuned, team trained, system handed over.

What is production AI?

Production AI is an AI system that operates continuously in a live business environment, handling real data and real users — held to the same reliability standards as any other production software. This is different from pilot AI (which runs in controlled environments) or demo AI (which shows capability without handling real workflows). 67% of enterprise AI projects fail to reach production.

How is Altor different from a docs chatbot?

Docs chatbots answer 'how does this work?' from your knowledge base. Altor answers 'why is this broken for this customer right now?' by querying their actual API logs, checking your bug tracker, and verifying their billing status — across 6+ systems in under 2 minutes.

How is Altor different from our support platform?

Pylon, Plain, Zendesk — they route and manage tickets. Altor investigates them. We plug into your existing support tool as the investigation layer. You keep your workflows, we add the diagnosis.

Will Altor take actions without asking?

Not by default. Altor starts as a read-only investigator — it surfaces a diagnosis for your team to review. You control which action types graduate to auto-approval. Destructive actions are never automated.

What if our stack isn't listed?

If an API exists for your system, we can integrate it. The architecture composes tools — it doesn't hardcode connectors. We've yet to encounter a B2B stack we can't connect to.

What does Altor pricing look like?

Usage-based — you pay per investigation, not per seat. Pricing is quoted in USD ($) with no minimum commitment. We'll scope pricing during the demo based on your ticket volume and systems.

First Call Resolution (FCR)

First Call Resolution measures the percentage of support tickets resolved in the first interaction, without escalation, callback, or follow-up contact required from the customer. In B2B support, it is a direct test of whether the first responder had enough information and authority to actually solve the problem.

Why it matters for B2B support

FCR is one of the highest-impact metrics in B2B support because a 1-point increase usually reduces total ticket volume by 2–3% through fewer reopens and follow-up contacts. For a team handling 10,000 tickets per month, improving FCR from 72% to 80% removes roughly 800–1,200 secondary contacts. The biggest blocker is investigation access: L1 agents cannot resolve what they cannot diagnose, and they cannot diagnose without access to production systems, billing tools, or bug history. Teams using Zendesk plus separate ClickHouse, Stripe, and Linear workflows usually see FCR stall until investigation is automated.

Key benchmarks

72%

average FCR for B2B technical support teams (industry benchmark, HDI 2024)

85%+

FCR target for best-in-class B2B support organizations

2–3%

reduction in total ticket volume for each 1-point FCR improvement

45 min

average investigation time per technical ticket that prevents first-call resolution

How Altor helps

Altor raises FCR by delivering diagnosis before the first agent reply, so agents can resolve more issues without a callback or escalation. That turns the first interaction into an answer, not a data-gathering step.

FAQ

What is a good first call resolution rate in B2B technical support?

Around 72% is typical and 85%+ is best-in-class. Teams below 65% usually have a diagnosis-access problem more than a coaching problem.

Why does FCR reduce total ticket volume?

Because every unresolved first contact creates more work: reopen requests, follow-up emails, callbacks, and internal handoffs. Even a small FCR improvement compounds across monthly volume.

How is first call resolution different from first contact resolution?

They are closely related metrics, but B2B teams often use first call resolution for synchronous channels and first contact resolution for broader omnichannel reporting. Operationally, both are measuring whether the first interaction fully solved the issue.

See Altor investigate a real ticket

We connect to your systems and diagnose a real ticket in 2 minutes during US hours.

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