Alejandra Sivori
Alejandra Sivori
Founder of Cloudha | | Digital Transformation CRM & AI Advisor | Content & Course Creator | Speaker | Senior Salesforce Technical Architect | Solution Architect | 14x Salesforce Certified | TOGAF Certified

Navigating the AI Era in Support

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If we turn to AI for solutions without having developed the technical skills to assess its suggestions, we risk unknowingly implementing poor or unsuitable solutions.

AI is becoming a strategic priority in modern customer support. But the challenge isn’t just about adopting new technology—it’s about turning potential into practical value and doing it responsibly.

To unpack what that really looks like, we connected with Alejandra Sivori, Founder of Cloudha and a respected voice in AI-led digital transformation. With deep technical expertise and a pragmatic, people-first approach, Alejandra helps businesses move from curiosity to confident implementation.

In our conversation, she shared insights on identifying high-impact use cases, setting meaningful metrics, building strong guardrails, and preparing AI agents for real-world scenarios. Alejandra’s insights offer a clear roadmap for support leaders who want to make AI work without losing sight of the human element.

Let’s dive into the conversation.

Q & A

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Based on your experience in making AI practical for businesses, how should organizations, particularly in customer support or knowledge management, identify their first AI use case, and what should they keep in mind to ensure it truly enhances the customer experience?

Getting started with the right AI use case is key to gaining organizational momentum
and buy-in both from leadership and from the teams involved.

I recommend a structured approach when it comes to identifying the first AI pilot.
When advising customers, I use a framework that involves the following phases:

1. Aligning on business goals: As with any tech implementation, it’s essential
to have a clear purpose. Ensure that leadership is aligned with the business
goals that AI will support.

2. Performing an AI readiness assessment: This is an evaluation based on
business alignment, technology, data and skills.

3. Identifying potential use cases: Host workshops, hackathons, or
brainstorming sessions with different departments. These are great
opportunities for teams to share their pain points and bottlenecks and explore
how AI might help.

4. Scoring each use case: These can vary by context but typically include
impact, risk, complexity, and cost.

It is a good idea to work with experienced AI advisors for this process. They bring
insight, help avoid costly mistakes, and ensure the technology serves its intended
purpose.

The output is a scorecard with a prioritized list of AI use cases and a clear roadmap.
After going through this exercise, organizations can confidently move into the
implementation phase with higher chances of success.

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You’ve emphasized the urgency of AI adoption in your podcast with Ribbonfish. Once a clear business goal is identified, what key factors or metrics should leaders focus on to ensure the AI initiative drives meaningful productivity and avoids misaligned or ineffective results?

Each organization will have its own business metrics aligned to its strategic goals.
Measuring the impact of the AI applications against those metrics will either validate
the direction or signals when a pivot is needed.

In particular, for agents, we need to cover multiple aspects of the implementation:
Data: The quality of the data will be a key factor. Many customers start with a pilot using perfectly clean data, and get a false sense of performance. Testing with realistic data sets and identifying data gaps early will expose weak spots before they become problems.

Guardrails: Multiple types of guardrails can be implemented to avoid undesired output. At a minimum, include security guardrails, response filters, and topic restrictions to keep the model within acceptable boundaries.

Go live as early as possible and iterate fast: Even if tests are successful, it’s not rare for businesses to find that when the agent is deployed into the real world, the outcomes are surprisingly different. Be prepared; assume that your agents will require quick intervention and ‘on-the-fly’ prompt adjustments to improve their reliability.

Continuous monitoring and refining: Set up a robust testing and feedback framework. Break down test cases into specific scenarios. Clearly define benchmarks.
Keeping a human-in-the-loop means you remain in control, at least at the early stages, reviewing edge cases, correcting errors, and steadily improving the system with each cycle.

SearchUnify Lens

This approach directly informs how we design and operationalize AI at SearchUnify. Guardrails such as security controls, response filters, and intent-based restrictions are embedded across solutions like Agent Helper and Cognitive Search to promote safe, reliable, and context-aware outputs.

We also maintain a strong focus on human-in-the-loop oversight. While AI handles repetitive tasks and surface-level decisions, human judgment ensures alignment with strategic goals and enterprise context. This balanced collaboration between machine and human intelligence supports continuous learning, drives operational efficiency, and safeguards both quality and trust.

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Risk is often cited as a critical factor when evaluating AI initiatives. From your experience, what technical or organizational hurdles should businesses watch for when implementing automation or AI solutions, and what lessons can help prevent early setbacks?

The complexity of using AI in businesses has multiple dimensions. On one hand, we have this technology that is very powerful, but it’s non-deterministic. We cannot fully predict how it will respond. This is a shift of paradigm from traditional software and automation. On the other hand, we have additional new challenges, such as bias, regulations and the societal impact of AI.

I believe that educating the workforce is absolutely essential, starting from an AI-enabled leadership. AI literacy involves not only knowing how to leverage AI for better results but also understanding how AI works, what the risks are, and how to deal with hallucinations, data privacy, unpredictability and ethical concerns.

An important lesson is to start with simple use cases with low risk and keep a “human-in-the-loop” approach. Starting with complex use cases before the organization has reached AI maturity could lead to early frustration and a discouraged team.

SearchUnify Lens
At SearchUnify, we believe responsible AI starts with built-in safeguards that address core risks from day one. Our solutions incorporate features that mitigate key challenges like hallucinations, data privacy, and offensive content. SearchUnifyFRAG™ grounds LLM responses in verified enterprise knowledge to reduce hallucinations and deliver accurate, context-aware answers. PII Masking protects sensitive and personally identifiable information in real-time.

Meanwhile, our Content Flagging mechanism helps detect and flag biased, offensive, or harmful outputs for human review, ensuring accountability and ethical alignment. Coupled with a human-in-the-loop approach, these safeguards support safe, scalable AI adoption that builds trust and accelerates ROI.

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AI agents are rapidly gaining momentum, with many experts predicting they’ll redefine the support industry. From your experience, what best practices should organizations follow when testing AI agents before full deployment?

Specifically for AI implementations, we have a special type of metric called “Evals”. These metrics evaluate the quality of LLM-based applications and are a critical component of any real-world AI rollout.

There are a variety of options when it comes to Evals; an example is evaluating the output of a support chatbot based on relevance, tone, accuracy, clarity, and grammar—test for hallucinations, bad answers, security gaps, and bias. Expose the weak spots before they cause damage.

Evals should be both broad and deep. Broad, to cover all the key dimensions of performance. Deep, to stress-test the system under realistic and edge-case scenarios. The more specific and granular the Evals, the easier it becomes to troubleshoot and debug failure modes, measure progress, and deploy targeted fixes.

SearchUnify Lens
Alejandra’s perspective closely aligns with our approach at SearchUnify. We see AI agent evaluation as a strategic step toward building reliable customer experiences. Before deployment, our agents undergo domain-specific testing to assess accuracy, tone, clarity, and resilience across real-world and edge scenarios.

We also apply established frameworks like Google’s Evals and RAGAs to measure retrieval and generation quality. To ensure consistent performance, we test multi-agent collaboration and monitor post-deployment outcomes through real-time dashboards—enabling teams to track impact, resolve issues, and continuously optimize.

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SearchUnify has introduced its Agentic Suite, featuring nine powerful AI agents designed to support customers at every stage of their journey. From your perspective and experience, how is AI evolving from being reactive to truly proactive, and what does this shift mean for enhancing the overall customer experience in the support Ecosystem?

Having nine AI Agents working 24/7 for your customers, each one focusing on a specific stage of their journey, could be transformative for businesses. This shift turns Customer Support into a strategic function, nurturing Customer relationships proactively as opposed to responding when things don’t go well.

For customers, this builds trust. Knowing that a team is looking after their potential issues before they occur strengthens their loyalty.

AI tools that track behavior, enable fast responses, and drive prompt action turn support into a competitive edge.

SearchUnify Lens
This shift from reactive to proactive support, as Alejandra emphasized, is precisely what the AI agent Suite embodies. With nine dedicated AI agents working in tandem, businesses can now engage customers throughout their journey, not just when something goes wrong.

Each agent is purpose-built to solve a specific challenge, whether it’s reducing case volumes through personalized self-service, proactively resolving issues before they escalate, or extracting actionable insights from customer feedback.

The result is a connected and intelligent support ecosystem that anticipates needs, accelerates resolution and strengthens customer trust. By enabling this proactive orchestration, the AI agent Suite redefines support as a strategic advantage rather than a cost center.

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Bring These Insights to Life

You’ve explored expert perspectives. See how we can drive real results for your team.

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Looking Ahead: Thoughtful AI, Real Impact

This conversation with Alejandra was full of practical ideas and fresh perspectives. From picking the right AI use case to setting up strong guardrails and keeping humans in the loop, it reinforced how thoughtful AI can improve both customer and team experiences.At SearchUnify, we're building on the same vision, using proactive agents, real-time safeguards, and responsible design to deliver real impact.Big thanks to Alejandra for joining us. If you're exploring how AI can make support smarter and more connected, we'd love to keep the conversation going.
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