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.

Agent Shrinkage

Agent shrinkage is the percentage of scheduled agent time unavailable for ticket handling because of breaks, training, meetings, administrative work, absenteeism, or system downtime. It measures the gap between scheduled capacity and effective capacity.

Why it matters for B2B support

Shrinkage is one of the most important but most ignored inputs to B2B support staffing. A 30% shrinkage rate on a 20-agent team means only about 14 agents are effectively available at any given time, so a “20-agent team” does not produce 20-agent throughput. Most B2B support teams run 25–35% shrinkage, split between scheduled categories like breaks and training and unscheduled categories like absenteeism or tool outages. Capacity plans that ignore shrinkage systematically under-resource the team and create chronic SLA breach patterns.

Key benchmarks

25–35%

typical shrinkage rate in B2B support teams (percentage of scheduled time unavailable for tickets)

30%

effective headcount multiplier — a 20-agent team needs 26–28 agents to achieve 20-agent throughput

12%

unscheduled shrinkage rate (absenteeism + lateness) in contact center benchmarks

$680K

annual wasted payroll from 30% shrinkage on a 20-agent B2B support team at $85K loaded cost

How Altor helps

Altor cannot remove all shrinkage, but it helps teams get more throughput from the capacity they actually have by reducing time spent on manual diagnostics. That lowers the headcount pressure created when effective capacity is smaller than scheduled capacity.

FAQ

What is the difference between shrinkage and schedule adherence?

Shrinkage covers all unavailable time built into or disrupting the schedule. Schedule adherence measures whether agents were where they were supposed to be during the time they were scheduled to be available.

Why must shrinkage be included in staffing models?

Because scheduled headcount is not the same as productive capacity. If leaders staff to raw headcount, the team will miss service targets even when everyone appears fully assigned.

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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