Narayan AmmachchiGerman AI startup Parloa, which established its US presence just a few months ago, secured US$66 million in funding.
Parloa’s specializes in contact center automation through an innovative AI speech application that enables natural language interactions between customers and AI.
Founded in 2018, Parloa’s rapid rise seems fueled by the recent advancements in generative AI, mainly ChatGPT’s sudden break into the market.
The company raised US$21 million in investments last year. This latest infusion of capital elevates Parloa’s total funding to US$98 million since its inception.
Parloa claims that what sets its platform appart from those of its competitors is the platform’s intelligence. The company assures it can both understand the reasons behind a customer’s call and intelligently route calls to the most relevant agent.
Compared to traditional systems that often require cumbersome menus, this provides a much more user-friendly experience.
The platform also handles menial tasks, like frequently asked questions (FAQs), freeing up human agents for more complex issues.
Shopping for bots
The hype cycle around AI has made it difficult for business leaders to truly determine how to implement generative AI in their organizations. Customer care, however, has emerged as one of the few evident customer-facing use cases for the technology.
CX automation is pretty much a given in the service portfolios of vendors of AI solutions. Although chatbots have been around in contact centers for years, the sudden break of GenAI into the market has pushed reality closer to the promise of true CX automation.
According to a recent survey by Everest Group and Telus International, about 47% of businesses plan to implement pilot or small-scale deployment of GenAI in non-voice CX operations this year. For voice operations, 32% said they plan to pilot or deploy in a small scale.
We’re already seeing the restaurant industry get creative with GenAI in their day-to-day operations. Similar transformations are happening in retail, healthcare, finance and more.
In that context, Parloa’s recent investment round does not come as a surprise. The company already has an impressive list of clients which includes Swiss Life, Decathlon and Germany’s Red Cross.
And Parloa isn’t the only company benefiting from the latest AI craze in business. Conversational AI firm SYNQ3 was recently acquired by California-based voice recognition company SoundHound. Last year, voice-based CX firm Plum Voice merged with cloud CX provider Sharpen Technologies. In March, Zendesk acquired AI-powered CX automation company Ultimate.ai.
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