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.

Schedule Adherence

Schedule adherence measures the percentage of scheduled working time during which support agents are actually available and handling tickets, compared with their published work schedule. It captures the gap between staffing plans and real queue coverage.

Why it matters for B2B support

Schedule adherence is the difference between headcount on paper and headcount actually serving customers. An 80% adherence rate on a 10-agent team means only about 8 agent-equivalents are available at any given moment, which magnifies every ticket spike. Best-in-class B2B support teams run around 88–92% adherence, while poorly managed teams run 70–78% and effectively lose 2–3 agents out of every 10 scheduled. The biggest adherence detractors are unplanned training, internal meetings booked during peak hours, and agents being pulled into non-support work like implementation or sales calls.

Key benchmarks

88–92%

schedule adherence rate for best-in-class B2B support teams

70–78%

typical adherence rate for teams without schedule adherence tracking

2.2 agents

effective headcount lost per 10 scheduled at 78% vs. 92% adherence

$340,000

annual cost of 78% vs. 92% adherence on a 20-agent team (wasted payroll)

How Altor helps

Altor helps adherence indirectly by shrinking ticket workload volatility, so managers need fewer ad hoc interruptions and fewer emergency escalations to engineers. It also makes staffing gaps more visible because investigation time is no longer hidden inside the schedule.

FAQ

What lowers schedule adherence most in B2B support?

Meetings during peak queue hours, unplanned cross-functional work, and weak enforcement of breaks and training windows. These all reduce real queue capacity without changing scheduled headcount.

What is a strong schedule adherence target?

Most B2B teams should aim for 88–92%. Pushing much above that can create an overly rigid environment, while staying below 80% usually means material queue coverage loss.

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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