You've seen it happen countless times. A user asks how to update their subscription, and your support team crafts a careful response:
"First, go to Account Settings. Then click on the Billing tab. Next, select Subscription Management. Then click the Edit button next to your current plan..."
Seven steps later, the user still might not complete the task. And tomorrow, another user will ask the same question, starting the cycle again.
This pattern creates a double burden: frustrated users abandoning tasks halfway through, and support teams spending hours explaining the same processes over and over. Research from Clockify found that employees spend approximately 4 hours and 38 minutes each week on duplicate tasks, amounting to about 10% of their work time. When multiplied across your entire support organization, those hours represent significant lost productivity and opportunity cost.
What if there was a better way?
The Execution Gap in L2 Support Traditional support follows a predictable pattern: users ask how to do something, and support explains the steps. But this approach creates an execution gap – the space between understanding how to do a task and actually completing it.
This gap is especially problematic for L2 support scenarios that involve complex, multi-step processes. According to BMC , "Level 2 (L2) support tackles in-depth troubleshooting and resolution of complex problems that cannot be handled by L1. These are less frequent but require more expertise and time." These L2 issues typically involve multiple systems, configuration changes, account modifications, or complex workflows that require technical expertise to navigate.
The cost of this execution gap extends beyond just time. Support teams handling an average of 21 tickets per day (according to Higher Logic ) find themselves caught in a cycle of repetitive explanations for similar issues. This repetition not only consumes valuable time but also creates a disconnect between what users need (completed tasks) and what support provides (instructions to complete tasks). The cognitive load of switching between different support contexts while handling these 21 daily tickets further compounds the challenge for support teams trying to provide excellent service.
Bridging the Gap: From Explanation to Execution Brainfish recently launched API Actions – a significant shift in how support operates. Instead of explaining how to complete tasks, Brainfish’s ambient AI agent now connects directly to your product's backend to execute tasks for users.
Here's what this looks like in practice:
When a user asks how to update their subscription, Brainfish doesn't provide step-by-step instructions. Instead, it pulls their current plan details directly from your billing system, shows them available options, helps them complete the change right there, and confirms the action has been completed.
The entire task is completed end-to-end within Brainfish, not just explained.
This transformation addresses a fundamental insight from Smartsheet's research , which found that over 40% of workers spend at least a quarter of their work week on manual, repetitive tasks. Email, data collection, and data entry take up the most time – all activities that involve following prescribed steps that could be automated. API Actions tackles this problem by removing these repetitive steps from both the user's experience and the support team's responsibilities.
Beyond Basic Self-Service: The New Support Experience API Actions handles even sophisticated L2 support scenarios that typically require human expertise. When users report issues, Brainfish automatically creates fully-detailed tickets in your ticketing system, complete with relevant contextual information gathered through natural conversation. This process transformation is especially valuable considering Higher Logic's finding that support teams handle an average of 21 tickets daily – many of which involve similar patterns that API Actions can now address automatically.
For e-commerce scenarios, the system guides users through return processes, helping them submit necessary information (including product images) and initiating the refund process without requiring agent intervention. The continuous back-and-forth normally required for these processes is eliminated, allowing for immediate resolution.
When users try to access premium features beyond their current subscription, API Actions identifies the limitation and facilitates an immediate upgrade path. Rather than explaining how to upgrade (which often results in abandoned upgrades), it connects directly to your billing system to show options and process the change seamlessly. This approach directly addresses the execution gap where users understand what they need to do but don't complete the process.
All of this happens through natural conversation, not rigid forms or decision trees.
The system figures out what information it needs and gathers it contextually, creating a seamless experience that feels like working with your best support agent – but one that never needs sleep, training, or time off.
A Copilot for Support Teams: Transforming Internal Workflows While API Actions shines in user-facing scenarios, it also serves as a powerful copilot for your support team. According to Clockify's research, employees spend nearly 5 hours weekly on duplicate tasks – time that could be reclaimed through automation. Support agents can use the same API Actions technology to execute complex backend processes without switching between systems, eliminating the context-switching that fragments productivity.
When handling complex customer issues, agents can complete multi-step tasks while on calls or chats, providing immediate resolution instead of explaining how to do it or promising to follow up later. This capability transforms what BMC describes as L2 support's "in-depth troubleshooting and resolution of complex problems" into streamlined processes that feel effortless to both agents and customers.
The system also enables agents to access and update information across connected systems without navigating multiple interfaces. This integration directly addresses the challenge identified in Smartsheet's research about workers spending significant time on data collection and entry – tasks that API Actions can now handle seamlessly in the background while agents focus on the customer relationship.
By providing these capabilities, API Actions doesn't replace support teams – it amplifies their capabilities , allowing them to focus on the complex, nuanced aspects of customer interactions that truly require human expertise and empathy.
The Results: L2 Support Without L2 Headcount Growth By automating complex support tasks through API integration, companies can achieve L2 support capabilities without proportionally scaling their support teams. This efficiency is crucial given Higher Logic's finding about the volume of tickets teams handle daily. When many of these 21 daily tickets involve repetitive processes that could be automated, API Actions creates leverage that allows teams to maintain quality while handling increasing volume.
This approach delivers multiple transformative benefits for organizations. Users experience dramatically reduced effort since they receive completed tasks, not just directions. The traditional multi-step process is replaced by a single conversation that culminates in an actual result. Resolution times accelerate dramatically since there's no more back-and-forth exchanges to guide users through processes – the system handles the execution directly.
Task completion rates increase substantially as processes actually get finished, not abandoned halfway through complex instructions. This improvement addresses a fundamental gap in traditional support where success is often measured by whether instructions were provided, not whether tasks were completed. Finally, teams achieve better resource allocation as support professionals focus on complex issues that truly need human expertise, rather than walking users through repetitive processes that could be automated.
The Clockify research showing that employees spend 10% of their work time on duplicate tasks reveals the massive opportunity here – API Actions helps reclaim that time across your organization, creating capacity without adding headcount.
Moving Forward: Support That Does, Not Just Explains API Actions represents a fundamental shift in how support works – moving from explanation to execution. By connecting directly to your systems and executing the right API calls automatically, it transforms the support experience for both users and teams.
Smartsheet's finding that over 40% of workers spend at least a quarter of their week on manual, repetitive tasks highlights the magnitude of this opportunity. When support can execute these tasks directly rather than explaining how to do them, it creates a cascade of benefits throughout the organization – from improved user experiences to more efficient support operations.
The traditional approach of measuring support by the quality of explanations is giving way to a new paradigm: measuring support by completed tasks and successful outcomes. In this new world, the 21 daily tickets that Higher Logic found support agents handling become opportunities for immediate resolution, not just explanation.
The days of "follow these 7 steps" are coming to an end. The era of "it's already done" has begun!
See API Actions in-action for free. Try it out today: https://www.brainfishai.com/api-actions.
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