Artificial intelligence has been the center of conversation pertaining to chatbots and customer support via messaging, but CallDesk, a start-up in the customer service technology field, is working to bring artificial intelligence to the call center as well. The French company just secured $2.5 million in funding from Nine Capital and EQT ventures and has 10 enterprise clients so far.
The experience of interacting with CallDesk’s virtual agent will be rather different than the standard automated answering system that many companies use today. CallDesk’s artificial intelligence technology will rely on natural language processing to support conversations with customers. That means that rather than just responding to touch commands ("press 1 for…") or processing basic keywords and phrases like “billing” and “operator,” the virtual agent will actually understand what the customer wants to achieve during the call.
Plus, the virtual agent will be able to carry a conversation beyond a single exchange by recalling what was said earlier in the call.
CallDesk’s virtual agent can perform a number of tasks already, including appointment taking, call routing or qualifying, and order management. “Our average total discussion success rate is 80 percent and can go up to 95 percent for simpler use cases,” cofounder and CEO Vincent Gire told TechCrunch. But it’s still early days for the company, so its AI will likely expand and improve as the company continues to grow and mature.
With the new influx of funding, CallDesk plans to add more customization capabilities to its platform so that customers can individualize their virtual agents to perform tasks and fulfill needs unique to their businesses. This move will likely play a big role in attracting new customers, though CallDesk’s current set of customers already includes some big names like La Poste, a French postal service, and Bouygues, a French telecommunications company.