How Smokeball reduced search-to-tickets by 74%, and boosted NPS by 37%

Smokeball, a legal practice management software with over 15,000 customers worldwide, is helping lawyers drive daily improvements across their operations. Since July 2023, Smokeball has been working with Brainfish to implement a scaled AI self-service experience: an AI search experience that can instantly answer customer questions and report on dynamic themes and pain points.

Introduction: Enhancing Customer Experience at Scale

Customer experience is the key to loyalty, but many brands still struggle with outdated, fragmented systems. Long wait times, inconsistent responses, and a lack of personalization leave customers frustrated and products feeling harder to use than they should be. Enter Brainfish — in-product ambient AI support agents that make your product naturally intuitive by understanding user context and providing help exactly when needed. Here's how Smokeball, an award-winning software provider for law firms, partnered with Brainfish to transform their support operation from reactive ticket handling to proactive user success.

The Challenge: Scaling  Training & Support for Time-Poor Legal Professionals

Smokeball’s customer base consists of busy legal professionals who need quick, self-service solutions to their product questions. However, Smokeball’s CX team was overwhelmed with delivering weekly webinars, 1:1 training sessions and responding to support tickets. As a result, customers often had to wait over a week for personalised help, and as the client base grew, this model was unsustainable.To address these challenges, Smokeball sought a solution that would maintain the high quality of their support while reducing manual intervention. Their goal was to implement a superb self-service system that could serve their time-poor clients without compromising on value.

• Customers waiting over a week to access 1-1 personalised support.
• Growing customer base placing a strain on scalability of customer service.
• CX team overwhelmed with high workload and approaching burnout.

The Solution: Smokeball adopts Brainfish AI for self-service

Smokeball selected Brainfish for its ability to deliver accurate, on-demand support without the clunkiness of traditional help desks or chatbots. Starting with an 8-week pilot, Brainfish integrated seamlessly into Smokeball’s platform and support hub, offering customers an intuitive AI-powered search experience that provided direct, concise answers to their questions.

The Results: Boosting Customer Satisfaction and Operational Efficiency

Throughout the 8-week pilot, the initial impact of Brainfish was almost immediate.

Search to ticket rate‍

• Dropped from 30.% to 15.3% — meaning half as many users needed to submit a ticket after searching.

Ticket deflection rate

• Increased to 83%, indicating that most queries are resolved without agent involvement.

Now, 12 months later, Brainfish continues to empower Smokeball to deliver faster, more personalised support at scale. With the AI platform answering common customer queries instantly, the need for manual intervention has fallen, allowing the team to focus on delivering creative, proactive support. Key metrics tell the story of this transformation:

• Deflection Rate: 92% of queries, answered without human escalation.
• Full Resolution Time: Reduced to an average of 0.4 hours.
• Search-to-Ticket Ratio: Consistently sits at around 8%.
• Self-Service Rate: Increased from 67% to 83%.
• Support NPS: Jumped from 60 to 77
• Training NPS: improved from 54 to 74.

Leveraging Brainfish Analytics to Improve Customer Support

Brainfish's ambient AI agent doesn't just provide contextual answers — it continuously learns from user behavior to reveal exactly where people struggle with your product. The platform's behavioral analytics automatically surface patterns in user questions and interactions, organizing them into clear themes that show Smokeball precisely what their clients need help understanding.

This contextual intelligence approach goes far beyond traditional support metrics. Rather than just tracking ticket volume, Smokeball gains real-time insights into which features cause confusion, where users get stuck in workflows, and what content gaps prevent successful adoption. Every two weeks, their team uses these behavioral insights to proactively update help content and identify product improvements—preventing issues before they become support tickets.

The ambient AI agent's understanding of user patterns also powers Smokeball Academy, automatically generating relevant training content based on actual user needs rather than assumptions. This contextual approach to user education proved so effective that Smokeball eliminated their weekly training webinars entirely, saving more than $100,000 over 12 months while improving user success rates.

The bottom line?

Brainfish has delivered an ROI of 849%.

Building Loyalty: A Customer Chooses Smokeball Over a Competitor

Smokeball's transformation with Brainfish's ambient AI agent didn't just improve support metrics — it changed how clients experience their product. A standout example came when one of Smokeball's clients was approached by a competitor offering to pay the entirety of their $50,000 annual Smokeball subscription to switch providers. Despite this generous offer, the client chose to remain with Smokeball, citing the effortless product experience they'd grown to rely on.

This loyalty wasn't built through traditional support channels, but through Brainfish's ambient intelligence. When users can find answers contextually within their workflow — without breaking focus to search help docs or contact support — the product itself becomes a competitive advantage. This is what happens when you reduce customer effort rather than just deflect support tickets: you create experiences that competitors can't simply buy their way past.

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AI that enables legendary customer service

Thanks to Brainfish, Smokeball has been able to maintain a sub-2% contact rate, even as their client base grows. The platform’s ability to “learn” from customer interactions allows Smokeball to proactively offer assistance, delivering in-product help at pivotal moments. Smokeball’s collaboration with Brainfish showcases the power of AI in transforming customer experience. By automating routine support tasks, Brainfish has allowed Smokeball to scale their operations without compromising quality, delivering fast, accurate support that meets the needs of their busy legal clientele.

About Brainfish

Brainfish offers in-product ambient AI support agents. By understanding user context and behavior patterns, our intelligent platform provides help exactly when needed — without interrupting workflows or forcing users through rigid support channels. With just a few lines of code, you can embed AI support agents that learn continuously, prevent issues before they become tickets, and transform how users experience your product.