AI & ML

Navigating AI Ethics

By
Joel Passen
September 17, 2024
5 min read

The question is no longer about whether you will use AI; it’s when. And no matter where you are on your journey, navigating the ethical implications of AI use is crucial. Ethical AI is not just a buzzword but a set of principles designed to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability in how businesses use artificial intelligence. In the case of Sturdy, we’ve made ethical AI a core commitment. These principles guide our every move, ensuring AI benefits businesses without crossing the line into unmitigated risk.

What Is Ethical AI?

Ethical AI refers to developing and deploying AI systems that prioritize fairness, transparency, and respect for privacy. For businesses, this means using AI to make smarter decisions while ensuring that the data and technologies used do not cause harm or reinforce biases. The importance of this cannot be overstated—AI has the potential to either empower or exploit, and ethical guidelines ensure we remain on the right side of that divide.

Sturdy’s Commitment to Ethical AI

Sturdy's approach to AI revolves around several inviolable principles:

  1. Business-Only Data Use: Sturdy’s AI systems focus solely on improving how businesses make decisions. They don't delve into personal data or manipulate information for other purposes. The data processed by Sturdy comes from business sources like support tickets, corporate emails, or recorded calls—never from personal channels.
  2. No Ulterior Motives for Data: The data collected by Sturdy is knowingly provided by our customers, and the company doesn't use this data for any purpose beyond what's agreed upon. This ensures transparency and trust between the platform and its users.
  3. Privacy and Protection: One of the most critical aspects of Sturdy’s approach is its commitment to not allowing any entity—whether a business or government—to use its technology in ways that violate privacy. If a client were found to be doing so, Sturdy would terminate the relationship.
  4. No Deception: Our product is engineered to prevent deception. It never manipulates or deceives users, ensuring that the insights drawn from AI are used to enhance business practices rather than exploit loopholes.

Human Oversight and the Role of AI

At the core of Sturdy’s AI principles is the belief that AI should not replace human decision-making but augment it. Our Natural Language Classifiers (NLCs) are built to detect risks and opportunities based on the probability that a conversation indicates a particular issue. For example, when a customer complains about a "buggy" product, Sturdy’s AI might tag it as a "Bug" and label the customer as "Unhappy." However, humans remain in control—analyzing the situation and deciding the best action.

Final Thoughts

Sturdy's approach to AI exemplifies how businesses can responsibly use technology to drive growth and improve operations while safeguarding ethics. They demonstrate that AI doesn’t need to infringe on privacy or replace human decision-making. Instead, AI should be a tool that empowers teams, ensures transparency, and upholds ethical standards. Navigating the ethics of AI is not just a challenge—it’s an ongoing commitment, and Sturdy is setting a new standard for how it should be done.

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Integrations

Product Update! Sturdy now integrates with Jira

Joel Passen
March 10, 2025
5 min read

We’re making it easier than ever to turn customer feedback into action while saving businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. With Sturdy’s new Jira Connect, any AI-powered Signal in Sturdy can be automatically logged in Jira—helping teams capture, prioritize, and resolve issues faster than ever.

Sturdy for Jira is a Game Changer

Every team needs to know more about their customers. 

Turn customer feedback into valuable Jira content automatically. Sturdy’s AI accurately detects feature requests, bug reports, and other critical product feedback. Customizable agents then deliver this context-rich intelligence to a configurable staging area in Jira with all relevant user and account details, such as segment, ARR, and more. The content is objectively summarized automatically. From there, assigning it to an epic, task, sprint, or release is just one click.

Productivity Gains that Move the Needle

Businesses are unknowingly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on something as simple as manually logging Jira issues. A single customer-facing rep wastes nearly 87 hours annually on repetitive data entry—scaling up to a staggering $354,200 per year for a team of 100 reps. By integrating Sturdy’s AI-driven automation, businesses can reclaim thousands of hours, improve productivity, and reinvest those savings into growth and innovation—all while ensuring more accurate, real-time data flows into Jira effortlessly.

Align product teams with customer reality.

By centralizing AI-powered insights in Jira, Sturdy ensures that product and engineering teams get a complete, objective picture of what’s working, what’s broken, and what needs to be built—without relying on anecdotal feedback. Customer-reported issues appear in Jira moments after they happen, ensuring your product and engineering teams stay ahead of emerging trends and critical bugs—without the lag of traditional reporting.

Effortless setup, immediate impact.

Sturdy’s turnkey integration takes minutes to configure. Once connected, your team gains instant access to context-rich, structured feedback—helping you make faster, data-driven decisions that improve customer satisfaction.

Want to get started? Click the 'Schedule Demo' button at the top of the page.

Integrations

Product Update! Sturdy Now Analyzes Customer Slack Channels

Joel Passen
March 3, 2025
5 min read

We’re making it easier than ever for teams to tap into the power of customer conversations. With this integration, Sturdy’s AI-driven insights—trained to spot key behaviors and trends unique to your business—are now right where your team works. That means more proactive decisions, better collaboration, and a serious productivity boost.

Here’s how Sturdy works with Slack.

  • Get the right insights, right in Slack. Sturdy delivers AI-powered Signals where your team already works, flagging risks, expansion opportunities, and other key moments in real-time. No more digging through conversations—just actionable insights when you need them.

  • Stay on top of every conversation. If your team works asynchronously in Slack channels, it’s easy for important feedback to get lost. Sturdy keeps you ahead by surfacing critical insights before they slip through the cracks.

  • Act fast, not after the fact. Whether it’s a service risk, a feature request, or a potential upsell, Sturdy helps teams spot and respond to what matters—without disrupting their workflow.

Seamless sync with your tools. Sturdy doesn’t just stop at Slack. Insights discovered in customer Slack channels automatically flow into Jira, CSPs, CRMs, and other systems, ensuring the right teams get the right info—without extra work.

Customer Intelligence

He doesn’t talk much, but when he does, you’d better listen.

Steve Hazelton
February 27, 2025
5 min read

He doesn’t talk much, but when he does, you’d better listen.

Quote from C-3PO, Star Wars: A New Hope

A few days ago, I spoke to a business leader, and they asked, "How would Sturdy work for customers who never contact us?"

"Do you know who those customers are?"

"No idea."

"Would you like to?"

“Dark Customers.” It is almost impossible to source this list. Your customer might be dark to five silos, and bright in just one. 

(By the way, there is a little-known filter in the Accounts page of Sturdy that lets you sort by “Last Inbound.”  Check it out. You can see the last time any customer sent you an inbound message.)

Let’s be fair. In a recurring-revenue business, a lack of inbound contact isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes your customers don’t feel the need to chat with you, but they like you just the same. 

But, here’s the cool thought. What should happen when a Dark Customer suddenly reaches out? 

For example, Acme Corp sends an email to your CS team for the first time in 18 months. What needs to happen next?

I would want to know. So, we’re working on that. Naming such a signal is a bit tricky, if you have ideas, let us know.

How many customers will you have to lose before you try Sturdy?

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