Narayan AmmachchiSilicon Valley-based startup Cresta, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to augment call center agents, has raised US$21 million in funding from a group of investors led by Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz.
The AI platform that Cresta offers to call center firms helps customer care executives quickly identify the behavior and needs of the person they interact with.
No matter how inexperienced an agent will be, the AI platform turns him “into an expert” in a matter of days and weeks, claims the startup based in San Francisco.
Since it is based on artificial intelligence, the software continues to learn and adapt over time, helping call center agents at each point in the conversation. In other words, the software coaches each new agent by identifying his strengths and weaknesses while learning from expert agents.
“Contact centers are undergoing a significant transformation as AI automates basic tasks and agents need to be upskilled to better focus on interactions with customers,” said Saam Motamedi, Cresta Investor, and Partner at Greylock. “Cresta’s technology improves contact center agents’ effectiveness and accelerates productivity, and enables the companies using them to deliver differentiated customer experiences.
Cresta claims that it’s a software that helps agents respond better to customer queries, as it suggests to them what to say. “Suggestions are learned based on data from hundreds of thousands of historical conversations and Cresta continues to learn from expert agents over time,” says the startup.
In addition to coaching them, the software helps agents carry out common workflows such as placing orders and looking up customer information.
The founders of the startup – Zayd Enam, Tim Shi, and Sebastian Thrun – say Cresta had “spun out” of Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, reputed for developing foundational tech for driverless cars.
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