“We set out to become AI native. Risottos AI support agent is helping us turn this vision into a reality."

– Jose Izquierdo, Head of AIT Operations at Gusto

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Challenge

Slow, Vendor-Dependent Automation Blocked Scalable Support

In 2024, Gusto embraced AI-native operations with a clear goal in mind: giving every team room for rewarding, growth-oriented work. For Jose Izquierdo, Head of AIT Operations, this meant identifying the areas where intelligent automation could expand his team's capacity. Internal support topped the list.

While the company had spent years running a chatbot to field Tier-1 tickets, their new standard demanded more lift. Even with the chatbots support, Jose's team of eight still handled roughly 3,000 requests every month. Hours were lost in troubleshooting and access provisioning, leaving little time to standardize AI workflows and test additional AI agents.

As support demand grew, the team saw an opportunity to evolve their approach to automation. Their existing platform handled early needs well, but scaling required more flexibility, smarter learning over time, and deeper integrations with tools like Confluence. These insights helped clarify what the next phase of support should look like: a conversational AI platform that could continuously improve, fit naturally into existing workflows, and empower the team with greater control as automation expanded across the organization.

With this in mind, he started looking for an AI solution to unify Gusto's documentation, provide real-time support, and unlock capacity for strategic initiatives. Since employees sometimes shared sensitive data with specific departments, the tool also needed robust privacy safeguards.

Soon, he discovered Risotto. After previewing the teams AI help desk and seeing Risottos responsiveness firsthand during early conversations, Jose was convinced he'd found the right partner.

“Our team was moving quickly, and we needed a platform that could evolve at the same pace. That meant shorter turnaround times and more flexibility than we had before."

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Solution

AI-Native Support Resolves Tickets End-to-End and Scales Across Teams

Risotto worked side by side with Gusto's team to integrate with existing workflows and tools, including Jira, Slack, Confluence, and Okta. In two weeks, the platform had fully deployed across Gusto's IT, all with zero downtime. While Jose was already impressed by the platforms capabilities, this hands-on onboarding validated his trust in the partnership.

And within hours of going live, Risottos AI agent “Geekbot" began securely fielding Tier-1 support tickets based on internal policies. The agent answers every question, handling tasks like ticket creation and access provisioning with no manual intervention.

“Employees can get help directly within Slack, Jose explains. For instance, they can kick off workflows on getting access to any internal tool, ask any HR related question or resolve questions about GitHub repository access, all without leaving Slack. This streamlined experience eliminates context switching, improving day-to-day workflows and saving valuable time.

Because the agent understands conversational nuance and asks clarifying follow-ups, employees receive tailored assistance that feels like talking to a human support specialist. This guidance is always up-to-date, thanks to Risotto’s real-time sync with Gusto's documentation.

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“We send company-wide updates with just a few clicks", Jose says. These runbooks ensure employees know exactly what to do during new tool launches, policy changes, or unexpected outages.

But Risotto doesn't stop at real-time adaptation. Interactions with employees provide valuable feedback that helps the agent handle more complex cases over time. As a result, Jose continuously frees up more time for Al projects that define Gusto's competitive edge, like building an integrated, Al-forward ecosystem.

As Risotto handles conversations autonomously, it also documents every exchange for complete audit trails. This transparency gives Jose and his team operational oversight without manually tracking or worrying about SOC 2 compliance gaps.

"We came to Risotto hoping to hold the line - but the results blew away our expectations. We doubled our resolution rate on day one, and it hasn't dropped since."

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Results

Gusto Saves 114,000 Hours in Support Wait Time

With Risotto, Gusto completed a critical part of their Al-native transformation: building a scalable, automated support workflow that increases capacity across departments.

Today, this setup supports twice the ticket volume with the same lean team.

• 55% of tickets auto-resolved on average
• 53% resolution rate on day one of implementation
• 114,000 hours of support wait time saved
• 5-hour AI TTR (compared to 35-hour human TTR)
• 11 departments onboarded with 157 access rules and 50+ runbooks

Going forward, Jose plans to expand that foundation. His team is currently piloting Risotto with Gusto's Legal, Sales Ops, Data, Design Systems, and Dev Productivity functions, moving toward a company-wide support funnel.

Next, Jose plans to leverage Risotto's time-based access controls to automate access expiration, further strengthening security while reducing administrative overhead.