Call center analytics company Invoca just secured $30 million in series D funding, with Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners as the lead investor. The company has been making waves recently, appointing a new CEO in July and possibly preparing for an IPO, Techcrunch reports. According to Kyle Christensen, senior vice president at Invoca, it's an important time for the company, and not just because of what's going on internally.
"There have been a lot of announcements recently from tech companies getting serious about voice. Despite all the new channels that have emerged, people still want to connect with companies through voice. That can't be ignored," Christensen says.
Just earlier this week, Amazon sent shockwaves through the industry with the introduction of Amazon Connect, a contact center suite that leverages artificial intelligence. This is a major development for companies such as Invoca that connect the dots between call center interactions and the customer experience.
In many ways, digital customer experiences and voice interactions are still heavily siloed, but by bringing voice into the cloud, Amazon Connect is making it easier to bring the two together and gain insight into what's going on with voice. "Customers want intelligent voice experiences," Christensen says, "and Amazon's move just solidifies what we at Invoca have been saying all along. You need to be able to run analytics on what happens during voice calls. They can't forever exist as siloed interactions, separated from the rest of the customer experience."
Voice interactions are not just about providing support and getting questions answered.
According to Christensen, voice is a missed opportunity, which is why he says he's glad that big tech companies are now paying attention. "There's so much data in every interaction. Applying artificial intelligence to voice will allow to companies to actually scale data collection and insight gathering," Christensen says. That's where Invoca comes in.
As voice enters the cloud thanks to the likes of Amazon, Invoca is "perfectly positioned" to deliver the kinds of insight that organizations need to make sense of what's happening during voice calls. "Amazon's move is a win-win for their customers and ours," he says.
Invoca has remained quiet about whether an IPO is eminent, but Christensen is optimistic about the changes happening in the space and the direction that the company is heading. "There's a lot going on with machine learning, artificial intelligence, and voice in general. It's an exciting time for the industry and for us," he says.