Customer service AI startup ASAPP announced Friday it completed a $185 million Series B round, bringing its total funding raised to $260 million.
ASAPP’s platform uses artificial intelligence to analyze a call center’s most efficient agents’ calls, then uses that information to help the other agents learn how to adjust their approach in real-time, depending on what their customer is saying over phone or text. The software’s machine learning models are continuously learning from every interaction, which effectively helps make every agent “the best agent without the need for manual programming or extensive training,” according to the company.
ASAPP counts several telecom, travel and financial companies, including JetBlue Airways and Dish Network, as customers, according to Reuters.
As unemployment rates, travel cancellations, store closures and network outages continue to surge as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, industry leaders believe more call centers will adopt AI-driven software like ASAPP’s to meet an unprecedented level of customer call-ins. In fact, John Gallagher, ASAPP’s VP of communications, told Built In that all of the company’s users have seen an increase in call volumes ranging from 200 to 900 percent, as well as a 50 percent average decrease in agent availability as a result of the crisis.
“In the wake of the current pandemic, many of us have experienced firsthand just how broken customer experience operations are,” Gallagher wrote in an email. “Wait times are unbearable, customers are frustrated, and agents — dealing with the volume and frustration while trying to adapt to new working conditions — are increasingly overwhelmed. All this despite businesses having invested multi-billions of dollars in technologies explicitly designed to keep customers away from agents. It isn't working.”
Because ASAPP augments and automates workflow, however, it helps agents work quickly and more efficiently to get the customers what they want. Gallagher says the company will use this most recent funding round to better meet the increase in demand, invest in research and development and scale its go-to-market initiatives.
ASAPP is headquartered in New York and has offices in San Francisco, Raleigh, London and Buenos Aires. A source close to the company told Reuters that ASAPP is valued at more than $800 million.
