Conversational AI provider NLX raises $5M to enhance voice-driven customer support

Today, self-service automation provider NLX announced it had raised $5 million in seed funding to build an automated, personalized customer self-service solution for managing customer interactions in the travel, hospitality, banking, and insurance industries. 

The announcement comes as more enterprises are looking to AI-driven customer support to offer a compelling customer experience, with AI expected to power 95% of all customer interactions by 2025. 

The organizations’ flagship solution, Voice Compass, is a voice-driven self-service product that verbally guides customers through an onscreen journey to complete tasks, including everything from booking flights online to changing an account password. 

NLX provides organizations and technical decision-makers with a solution for automating customer support so that users can resolve problems quickly without needing to contact a support agent. 

This reduces the amount of manual tasks that support representatives need to complete and frees up their time so they can support customers with more complex challenges. 

Making the support journey independent 

In a traditional customer service interaction, a customer needs to contact a live agent or create a support ticket to request support from a human. The problem is that during peak periods of demand, representatives often struggle to keep up with the needs of customers. 

For instance, 64% of consumers aren’t able to get help or solve their problem through their provider’s customer service.

Conversational AI solutions like NLX’s Voice Compass attempt to automate these interactions so that consumers can complete support tasks independently of human support staff in order to avoid  delays or long wait times on the customer’s side, while also increasing the overall cost-efficiency of the support process.  

“NLX strives to be the leading customer self-service automation solution. Our conversational AI SaaS products help brands transform their customer interactions into automated, and personalised self-service experiences,” said Andrei Papancea, CEO and cofounder at NLX in an interview. 

“Customer contact organizations use NLX’s comprehensive, low-code approach to quickly design, build, and manage all their customer conversations in one place, and benefit from NLX’s cost-effective pay-as-you-go pricing model with no hidden fees or service charge,” he said. 

Automating the customer service experience 

NLX is part of the global conversational AI market, which researchers anticipate will grow from $6.8 billion in 2021 to $18.4 billion by 2026 as consumers demand more streamlined digital customer support experiences, and organizations turn to AI to meet these expectations. 

The organization is competing with a high volume of conversational AI providers, including Nuance Communications, which was acquired by Microsoft for $19.7 billion last year, and has developed voice recognition solutions for organizations in the health care, financial services, retail, and telecommunication solutions. 

Another is ASAPP, an AI call-center-automation company that last year raised $120 million and achieved a $1.6 billion valuation, with an AI-native platform that enables users to deploy AI services and applications, craft agent responses, automate time-consuming agent tasks, and offer speech-to-text transcriptions. 

However, NLX is aiming to differentiate itself from taking a low-code approach that enables organizations to manage their AI-driven support strategy from a centralized location. 

“\With the ability to create and manage all your call conversations in a central, low-code environment, and by leveraging multiple modalities in synchronization, Voice compass helps resolve inquiries that would normally require human support,” Papancea said. 

The funding round for NLX was led by Aquila Capital Partners with participation from Flying Fish Partners, Sage Venture Partners, and JetBlue Technology Ventures.