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.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contractual commitment between a vendor and customer that defines the maximum acceptable response and resolution times for support tickets by priority level. SLA breaches — where actual resolution time exceeds the committed window — trigger financial penalties including service credits, pro-rated refunds, or contract termination clauses. For B2B SaaS companies, SLA compliance is a direct revenue protection mechanism.

Why it matters for B2B support

Enterprise B2B SLAs typically define 3–4 priority tiers: P1 (production down, 15–30 min response, 4 hr resolution), P2 (major feature broken, 1 hr response, 8 hr resolution), P3 (degraded performance, 4 hr response, 24 hr resolution), and P4 (general questions, 8 hr response, 72 hr resolution). SLA breach economics are severe: a single P1 breach for a $200K/year enterprise customer can cost $10K–$50K in credits. At 5% monthly churn risk per breach, a single missed SLA on a $1M ARR account represents $50K in expected annual revenue loss.

Key benchmarks

P1: 4 hrs

maximum resolution time in typical enterprise B2B SLA

$10K–$100K

cost per SLA breach in enterprise B2B contracts

40%

of SLA breaches caused by investigation delay, not agent unavailability

2 min

Altor investigation time vs. 20–45 min manual — eliminates investigation-driven breaches

How Altor helps

Altor helps meet SLA targets by starting investigation the moment a ticket arrives, rather than when an agent picks it up. This eliminates the queue-to-investigation gap that causes most SLA breaches.

FAQ

What is an SLA in customer support?

An SLA in customer support is a contractual promise that defines maximum response and resolution times. Tier 1 (P1) issues — production outages — typically require a 15–30 minute first response and 4-hour resolution. Breaching these triggers financial penalties and damages customer trust.

What are typical B2B SaaS SLA targets?

P1: 15 min response, 4 hr resolution. P2: 1 hr response, 8 hr resolution. P3: 4 hr response, 24 hr resolution. P4: 8 hr response, 72 hr resolution.

What happens when you breach an SLA?

Contractually: service credits (typically 5–25% of monthly fee per breach). Practically: eroded customer trust, increased churn risk, and escalation to executive sponsors.

How do you track SLA compliance?

SLA compliance is tracked by measuring time-to-first-response and time-to-resolution per ticket against the contracted tier thresholds. Modern helpdesks (Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom) have built-in SLA timers. The operational challenge is not tracking — it's investigation speed. The 20–45 minute manual investigation window is where most P1 SLAs are lost.

What is the difference between SLA and SLO?

An SLA is a contractual commitment with financial penalties. An SLO (Service Level Objective) is an internal target, often more aggressive than the contractual SLA. For example, your SLA might commit to 4-hour P1 resolution while your internal SLO targets 2 hours. SLOs give you buffer to absorb investigation delays without breaching the customer-facing SLA.

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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