Forethought AI helps Upwork achieve a 75% chat self-serve rate and 50% faster ticket resolution
Upwork's distributed global support organization could not deliver consistent, accurate responses at scale. Agents searched across 20+ open tabs to find answers, slowing resolution. The previous chatbot required manual keyword-based training for every workflow, making management of thousands of workflows unsustainable.
How it works
Common implementation structure
How this type of workflow is generally built, generalized across documented cases — not tied to any one vendor's stack. Click any stage to read what happens there. Specific products that implement these stages appear in “Tools commonly seen” below.
Stage 1 · User submits support inquiry
A user submits a support inquiry via the Solve chat widget or email channel.
With Forethought, Upwork achieved a 75% average self-serve rate via chat widget (up from 45%), 99% accuracy on email responses, a 50% reduction in ticket close time for Assist users, and 90% accuracy across 500K auto-classified incoming tickets.
What failed first
The previous chatbot provider gave users inaccurate responses, required manual keyword entry for every workflow, and produced thousands of duplicated, incorrect workflows that became too complex to manage.