In July we wrote that AI-native services would redraw the line between software and consulting, and that Gainsight’s move into retention-as-a-service gave the model its first public reference case.
In our view there are three natural paths to create AI-native services:
- SaaS companies pivoting or expanding: that’s the Gainsight Atlas move.
- Agencies gradually embracing AI to transition human-powered services into increasingly AI-native ones: that’s the path most agencies are on.
- Using AI-native services to deliver services no one could have dreamt about before: that’s what A6 Group is doing with isalo.
Let me explain. There are services like customer experience monitoring and optimization that we could not have delivered a few years ago without the power of agentic AI. It could not have made economic sense, poor ROI for the client, no profitability for us, or it would not have been scalable, finding and training human resources to perform the services. But with AI today, we can deliver a managed service with a strong economic model and the scalability customers expect once they see the outcome.
Isalo continuously tests how buyers and customers experience a company across public LLMs and its own digital channels. It uncovers friction, incorrect answers, and missed opportunities before they impact the business.
We leveraged our deep knowledge of the buyer and customer journey to create services that go live in a few hours for our clients, and deliver the actionable recommendations that turn the needle for their marketing, sales, and customer support and success organizations.
Isalo starts with two managed services that monitor public LLMs and a company’s own websites and chatbots to deliver actionable recommendations that improve the digital experience:
- Buyer Experience Optimization tests and optimizes what prospective buyers hear when they research a company across AI channels, before they ever talk to sales.
- Customer Experience Optimization tests and optimizes what customers experience when they seek answers to their support and “how to” questions about a product or service.
Buyers remain anonymous all the way through the middle of the funnel during their evaluation. They rely on public LLMs and a vendor’s own digital channels to research how to approach their problem, analyze vendors, and work through what a successful implementation will look like before ever engaging with a short list. When a buyer gets an inaccurate or vague answer about pricing or compliance, the vendor risks disqualification without ever knowing the prospect existed.
On the support and success side, customers use every channel at their disposal to resolve problems, design an integration, and understand best practices for their use case. If they follow an outdated setup procedure that ChatGPT recommended, they will struggle quietly or assume the product doesn’t work as advertised. Both failures are invisible to any team that isn’t testing for them continuously.
In July we wrote that AI-native services would redraw the line between software and consulting. The software industry spent twenty years teaching customers to buy tools and do the work themselves, and that the companies defining the next decade would be the ones taking the work back. With isalo, we are taking that position in the domain we know best.