Observe.AI raises $8 million from Nexus Venture Partners, others

Observe.AI, a voice platform for call centres, has secured $8 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital investor Nexus Venture Partners with participation from MGV, Liquid 2 Ventures, Hack VC and existing investors Emergent Ventures and Y Combinator. Further financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

The Santa Clara, California-headquartered Observe.AI offers an artificial intelligence (AI) platform which provides call-centre agents with real-time feedback on customer sentiment. The platform listens to the call stream in real time, uses deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) to understand the context and generates suggestions and guidance for the agent.

“Humans like talking to humans because it gives them a sense of assurance which is at the core of a delightful customer experience. We are using the power of AI to make that voice conversation even more delightful by equipping the customer support agent with the tools needed while the call is going on. The agent no longer needs to place customers on hold, or transfer them around; continuous engagement is established until a successful resolution is reached. Our agent-first approach is all about making the job of the agent easier which translates into better productivity and higher customer satisfaction,” said Swapnil Jain, founder and chief executive of Observe.AI, in a statement.

Founded in May 2017 by Akash Singh, Sharath Keshava, and Jain, Observe.AI already boasts one of the largest call centres in the U.S. among its customers. The company recently partnered with Talkdesk, a cloud-based contact centre software provider, to launch its voice AI platform for Talkdesk customers. “Voice AI is a huge opportunity for call centre efficiency and improving the caller experience,” says Tiago Paiva, chief executive of Talkdesk.

Companies have been actively discouraging their customers to call their agents for last two decades because of increasing costs. “With the recent advances in deep learning and NLP (natural language processing), which will dramatically increase the productivity of agents, call centres are ready to become the first port of contact again for customer service. We are excited to partner with the team at Observe.AI as it leads this positive disruption in the call centre ecosystem,” said Ram Gupta, managing director of Nexus Venture Partners.

Startups that provide AI-powered voice-based services have been generating a lot of interest among investors. Several such firms have been funded in the last few months. Two months ago, Frontdesk AI raised $1.1 million in a seed round of funding led by Speciale Invest. Before that, DheeYantra Research Labs raised seed funding from Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).