Sam Krut

Co-Founder & President at Flip

Insights & ideas

Sam Krut argues that voice automation for retail customer service works best when it specializes narrowly in ecommerce and retail rather than attempting to be a generalist solution, which he says lets Flip achieve 40%+ automation versus the 5-10% typical of legacy IVR vendors [1]. A recurring theme is that call resolution should not be treated as a straight path: callers often do not know whether their issue is a return, warranty, or something else, so the system's job is to map ambiguous requests to the right handling process, either resolving them outright or handing agents fully gathered context [1].

He also holds a counterintuitive view on bot voice design, that a more human-sounding, humanlike AI voice actually performs worse than a more conversational but recognizably bot-like voice, because customers are trained to interact with assistants like Alexa or Siri and engage better with that register [1]. He connects this design philosophy to customer satisfaction, arguing automation improves CSAT by eliminating missed and abandoned calls while freeing agents to focus on higher-need tier-two issues, and by being available at all hours without breaks [1]. He frames implementation as fast, often same-day, because the underlying system is preset and only needs configuration to a brand's processes [1].

Experience

1. 
   Co-Founder & President

   FlipJun 2018 to Present

Education

• University of California, Davis · Computational Statistics

Media & appearances

• Flip Your CX! : What's in Store Podcast - Episode 8 - YouTubeFeb 17, 2025

  Sam Krut discusses how Flip provides voice automation for retailers, explaining that it functions as an AI voice bot answering tier-one and many tier-two customer service calls, then transferring unresolved calls to agents with gathered information. He describes Flip's automation performance at 40% and above compared to traditional IVR systems at 5-10%, attributes this to specialization in ecommerce and retail, and explains the conversational design approach and same-day implementation process.

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