EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
Augment raises $5M to boost customer service with AI
No one likes calling a customer service line, but it can be especially frustrating when the customer service rep puts you on hold multiple times to look up answers that you would expect them to know already.
San Francisco-based startup Augment Solution Inc. wants to solve this problem using artificial intelligence. Today, the company emerged from stealth mode and announced that it has closed a $5 million Series A funding round to develop its platform further.
The funding round was led by Silicon Valley Data Capital and JAZZ Venture Partners. This is Augment’s first major funding.
Augment’s “customer experience-driven” AI does not replace customer service agents. Instead, it aims to make their jobs easier by surfacing relevant answers and suggestions in real time. According to the company, its AI is powered by a machine learning algorithm that was trained using more than 100 million interactions with real customers. Augment said its AI continuously learns from every interaction with customers, so it can improve over time.
“We designed Augment with a focus on enhancing rather than replacing the agent workforce,” said Augment Chief Executive Matt Swanson. “Contrary to most chatbot technologies that result in garbled or confusing responses, our platform offers enterprise executives the ultimate Turing Test — their customers are unaware that their conversation is powered by AI.”
Augment will use its new funds to further develop its AI, and the company said its platform is already in use by some Fortune 500 companies. The company claims on its website that its AI can increase customer service productivity by 30 percent, and it promises to “ramp up new agents in minutes, not months.”
“Enterprises spend over $500 billion globally on customer support, but their processes are so inefficient with call center agents often ‘flying blind’ without access to rich customer and product data,” said Jim McLean, founder of Silicon Valley Data Capital. “The call center industry is ripe and overdue for disruption.”
Photo: Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 11.05.17 Macri presenta el 147 para obtener turnos telefónicos en los Hospitales públicos via photopin (license)
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