The customer support industry has seen a massive influx of startups like Sierra, Decagon and Parloa trying to infuse AI into automating customer calls, chat and messages so companies can handle more queries at scale.
But according to Athens-based Omilia, which has been working on automating voice calls and customer support since 2002, throwing AI at every process can be wasteful. The company’s CEO Dimitris Vassos says that a large proportion of incoming customer support queries involve basic information, such as account balances, and there’s little need to deploy large language models for such tasks.
“We will use any available weapon to win the battle for customer service. Companies like Sierra, Decagon, etc. identify as generative AI companies. Their sole purpose is to deploy generative AI and limit themselves. You may have a bazooka, but if your enemy is near you, you need a knife. This is the reality of the contact center, where you need multiple tools,” he said.
Omilia itself has expanded its operations to building self-learning agents that can work across different customer contact points. To build that out, the company has now raised a $67 million Series B led by Expedition Growth Capital.
