The Unexpected AI in Call Centers

Call centers have been facing an uphill battle – people rarely make calls to customer service lines to give positive feedback – since the advent of the rotary phone. For a long time, the difficulty in staffing call centers with agents led us to believe that voice recognition bots are the answer. With developments in automation over the last 10 years, from self-checkouts to psychiatric evaluations, it was a reasonable prediction that automated bots would be taking over customer service roles.



Turns out, rather than replacing the humans with ever-smarter bots, the key to successful customer service might be more empowered call center agents. Customers still want uniquely human interactions, preferring customer service through multiple communication channels capable of emotional empathy and hearing them out. Startups are shifting their utilization of AI, in the form of voice recognition and real-time script generation, from replacing call center center agents to coaching them. Here is a look at the recent fundings for call centers using AI to empower agents:

Genesys Cloud Services raised $580MM at the end of 2021 and announced plans to IPO early this year at a reported $30BN valuation.

Ozonotel raised a $5MM Round A in November from Stakeboat Capital.

Aircall raised a $120MM Round D from Goldman Sachs Private Equity in June 2021.

Dialpad raised a $170MM Round F from ICONIQ Capital in December at a $2.2BN valuation.

ASAPP raised $120MM from Fidelity Management & Research Company in May 2021 at a $1.8BN valuation.