Half our handoffs are the bot's idea

Name: Half our handoffs are the bot's idea
Start: 2026-12-06T13:00:00.000Z
End: 2026-12-07T13:00:00.000Z
Location: Leadership room

Where: Leadership room 488 George Street, 2000, Sydney
Host: Web Directions
Entry: Not stated
Sign-up: On the host's page

Open on webdirections.org

All Sydney events

You sign up with the host. foundercal only links to it.

Who you meetThe people on the listing, and what the host tells us about the room.

Adeline Yaw Speaker

Investors Not stated The listing does not say

The format Talks and halls Conference

Sign-up On the host's page Price not stated

AboutIn the host's words.

Speakers: Adeline Yaw (Automattic)

Track: Leadership

About one in four conversations with WordPress.com's AI support bot ends with a person. In about half of those, the bot suggested it.

These are two different problems. In one, the user asks for a person. In the other, the bot decides on its own to stop. On paid plans, when a user asks for a person, we hand the conversation to our support team with as few extra questions as we can. The two cases fail in different ways and need different fixes, but the second one gets much less attention.

This talk is about the second one, when the bot decides to stop. Our bot checks whether a conversation needs a person before it answers, not only after an answer has failed. I'll explain why it works this way and what that costs us. Then I'll cover what the bot says when it stops, and what it passes on.

https://data.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney/sessions.json#d0aec6ab-fa84-40bc-ab43-ae1257707f4e

Full text on webdirections.org .