Directly had a fantastic solution for customer support that used crowdsourcing agents aided by artificial intelligence tools. It needed to distance itself from the failed “chatbot” technology of yesteryear It also had to prove itself with early major clients like Airbnb, Autodesk, Samsung, XBOX, etc. that the newly adopted AI tools would deliver better experts.

When building a narrative for a customer support solution using crowdsourced experts aided by Artificial Intelligence ... What better way than using user-generated content enhanced by smart filters?

A petition was sent to 1,543 current experts … inviting them to be part of a regular hackathon!  Specifics on what we wanted were documented, with tips on achieving decent photography with inexpensive means. We provided examples of what to avoid (highlighting potential issues to avoid too much curation, filtering, and editing on Directly’s side). The results were very encouraging: 31 submissions were received, coming from Texas, Michigan, Florida… but also Spain, Italy, Kenya, Chile, India, Philippines, China, Senegal, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Malta, and Ecuador.