As the coronavirus pandemic continues to overwhelm the $400 billion call center industry, including remote customer care and sales representatives, a new problem has emerged that requires quick solutions: how to handle the massive surges of calls in ways that don't inconvenience callers more than absolutely necessary all while using technology that companies can quickly integrate and host.
This area is where ASAPP has stepped up their contribution. An artificial intelligence (AI) startup, New York-based ASAPP is helping large corporations deal with surges in customer service calls with new software using AI developed by machine learning engineers.
"Many organizations are experiencing historically high levels of customer interactions at a time when their capacity to support is at an all-time low," said Gustavo Sapoznik, ASAPP Founder and CEO. "By augmenting agents who are on the frontlines, ASAPP enables them to be vastly more efficient and productive, realizing significant savings while delighting customers. Our current focus is in solving customer experience challenges faced by large enterprises, which for decades has been addressed by attempting to deflect customer calls, and has resulted in poor experiences, frustration, and massive amounts of money being spent on this problem. Our approach to cost savings is radically different and focuses on building state-of-the-art capabilities to make agents better and empower them by augmenting and automating their workflows."
While acknowledging the successes of augmentation, Sapoznik undoubtedly makes sure to still credit the human customer service and sales agents with completing successful calls since his company's technological interventions aren't intended to replace those agents. Rather, the ASAPP platform is meant to aid agents by learning from and predicting interactions with customers, which should decrease the amount of training needed to achieve higher results and save more time and money in the long-term.
According to ASAPP, corporations that use their platform experience an impressive "45%-100% improvement in customer satisfaction scores." While high expectations and soaring claims don't necessarily mean that these figures are inflated, the ultimate proof may be seen down the road in how ASAPP's clients are able to improve and prevail as the weeks and months progress further into the pandemic.
Some of the startup's top customers so far include JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU), DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH), and Sprint Corporation (NYSE: S).
As of May 1, the privately-held ASAPP has raised $260 million in venture capital.