Asaf Goldstein is helping IT support teams use AI to create faster, more proactive, and more human customer experiences. As Senior Director of Global Customer Care at SysAid, he leads a global support organization using AI to identify trends, resolve issues faster, deflect routine tickets, and give agents better context before they ever speak with a customer.

In this episode, Russ and Asaf explore how AI is changing customer care from a reactive cost center into a proactive driver of customer loyalty. Asaf explains why the future of support is not just automation, but the right balance between AI, human empathy, and expert problem solving.

They dive into how SysAid uses AI across its support organization, including AI copilots, internal AI agents, sentiment analysis, ticket deflection, quality scoring, and proactive issue detection. Asaf shares examples of how AI helped his team identify critical issues, assemble engineering and DevOps teams quickly, and resolve customer problems before they escalated.

The conversation also covers the risks of over-automation. Asaf explains why AI should solve simple questions, summarize context, and guide agents, but also know when to hand a customer to a human. He shares how SysAid reduced unhappy customer survey responses from around 40 per quarter to 5 by combining AI-enabled insights with personal follow-up from team leads.

Along the way, Asaf discusses the rise of AI managers, the skills support agents need to stay relevant, why guardrails matter, and how companies can create customer service experiences that feel faster, smarter, and more personal.

Topics Covered:

[00:01] Welcome and intro, Asaf Goldstein and SysAid’s customer service award win

[00:28] SysAid’s background in IT service management software

[01:10] What is changing in AI-powered customer support

[01:26] Moving support from reactive to proactive

[02:33] Managing global customer care in an AI-driven environment

[02:39] How AI helps identify trends before customers report issues

[03:20] Using AI and Discord to detect critical customer issues

[04:22] Why a great support experience can increase customer loyalty

[04:57] Creating a “wow experience” in support

[05:41] Where pressure to automate support comes from

[05:57] How SysAid uses AI to resolve routine tickets

[07:30] Why complex support still needs expert human agents

[07:50] The risk of over-automating customer interactions

[08:55] Defining the human layer in modern support organizations

[09:26] Why personal touch still matters in technical support

[10:18] When humans are still absolutely critical

[10:30] Reducing unhappy customers through personal follow-up

[13:00] Empathy as a core part of customer service

[13:36] Where AI works well and where it falls short

[15:38] Deciding what gets automated and what stays human

[17:14] How AI changes the role of support agents

[19:04] Skills that matter most for the future of customer care

[20:38] The rise of AI managers inside support teams

[21:13] How AI helps agents personalize customer interactions

[22:27] How customer expectations will change as AI becomes common

[23:27] Common mistakes when rolling out AI in support

[23:47] Why AI answers need validation, formatting, and guardrails

[25:23] Lessons from the shift from phone support to chat support

[26:10] Metrics AI support managers should track

[27:52] Principles for adding AI without losing the human experience

[28:15] Guardrails, monitoring, and continuous improvement

[29:43] Final thoughts on creating wow moments with AI and people