It's estimated that over $400 billion are spent annually to run customer contact centers around the world. To cut costs, in recent years, contact centers have embraced AI and automation; research from The Harris Poll indicates that 46% of customer interactions were already automated as of 2021.
That's good news for the vendors selling contact center automation software. VCs believe that to be the case, certainly, judging by recent investment upswing. Startups including Invoca, Replicant, PolyAI and Observe.ai have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from backers over the past year alone, reflecting the bullish views of labor-saving customer service tech.
Another winner in the contact center automation boom is Parloa, a German-based enterprise software provider that uses a combination of conversational AI tech and low-code tools to help companies lighten the load on their contact center employees (or so the sales pitch goes). Parloa today announced that it raised €20 million (~$21.67 million) in a Series A funding round led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Newion and Senovo.
The fresh cash, which brings Parloa's total raised to €25 million (~$27.09 million), will be put toward customer acquisition efforts, opening a U.S. office and product R&D.