Solvvy Inc., an artificial intelligence startup based in Palo Alto, California, today announced that it has raised $12 million in funding to streamline the customer service experience.

Different companies run their help desks in different ways, but they usually grapple with the same basic set of challenges. These include familiar issues such as inconsistent answers and long wait times that tend to become particularly noticeable during peak hours. Solvvy Inc., which was founded in 2013 by Ph.D. graduates from Carnegie Mellon, has developed a cloud-based platform that uses machine learning to ease the load on contact center staff.

The service references customer inquires against a company’s knowledge base and past tickets to check if the requested information is already available. In case it is, Solvvy automatically generates a customized answer for each user.  

Several other companies provide similar capabilities, usually in the form of chabots designed to mimic a human support agent. Where Solvvy seeks to set itself apart is in the versatility department. In contrast with chatbots, which often rely on preprogrammed scripts and can only process one question at a time, the startup says that its platform is capable of answering full-length support tickets.

This is facilitated by the fact that Solvvy’s algorithms account for issues such as spelling mistakes that often trip up automated response systems. Moreover, accuracy is improved over time as the number of tickets available for analysis increases. 

According to Solvvy, the companies using its platform have on average seen a 20 percent drop in the number of tickets that must be handled manually by help desk personnel. Notable adopters include GoFundMe Inc., MailChimp Inc. and Vimeo LLC. 

Solvvy will use the new funding to acquire more customers, as well as work toward its goal of automating 90 percent of common customer service requests within five years. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, an early investor in file sharing giant Box Inc. Returning backers Pear Ventures, Signatures Capital and True Ventures chipped in as well. Solvvy has raised a total of $16.5 million to date.

Image: Solvvy