Malte Kosub and Stefan Ostwald started the agency “Future of Voice” back in 2017.
Berlin Dial first, then wait: The Berlin start-up Parloa wants to put an end to waiting times for customer service calls. This should save callers time and companies money. The mostly annoying music on hold should then no longer have to be heard. To this end, Parloa has developed an artificial intelligence-based platform for automating customer communication. Among other things, it enables callers to register, change addresses or request bills.
The aim is for call center employees to be able to answer calls immediately, says company co-founder Malte Kosub to Handelsblatt. For further growth – also in the USA – the company has now collected 20 million euros from investors.
The financing round was led by Swedish venture capitalist EQT Ventures. One of the participants was national soccer player Mario Götze. Money also came from Erik Muttersbach and Michael Wax from the logistics start-up Forto, Personio boss Hanno Renner and Nicolas Peters from Signavio.
Who is the person you are talking about?
Parloa’s roots are in an agency. As early as 2017, Malte Kosub and Stefan Ostwald started the agency “Future of Voice”, which dealt with AI technology in customer service. Since 2018 they have focused on Parloa. In the meantime, the workforce has grown to more than 100 employees.
Customers include companies such as Decathlon, the German Red Cross, Thalia, Swiss Life and the online shop HSE. “HSE calls three million people a year,” says Kosub. Parloa benefits from a lot of phone calls: “The customer buys a package from us and orders, for example, one million minutes with a certain term.”
Parloa’s primary goal is to integrate AI technology into customer service. Parloa concentrates on the telephone hotlines. “This is the premier class,” says Kosub. It is difficult to make machines sound natural. According to the German Call Center Association, more than 560,000 people currently work in the industry.
It is questionable whether it will continue to be more than half a million in a few years. “The requirement profile for call center employees will change. In the case of repetitive issues, the AI can take over the tasks well, but in the case of emotional issues or complex processes, employees can certainly do it better,” says Kosub.
How are the chances?
Doreen Huber from EQT Ventures sees great potential for the business model: “A new era in customer service is now beginning for me. The technology is advanced enough to take on tasks in real time.” The volumes are comparatively large. The Call Center Association currently goes from more than 25 throughout Germany Millions of customer contacts every day via all contact channels such as telephone, e-mail and social networks.
According to Kosub, the current economic weakness is helping sales: “We currently have tailwind because we help companies to be more efficient.” That’s probably why the company’s valuation increased during the financing round, says Kosub.
There are now some companies that are dedicated to automating customer service. Probably the biggest competition for Parloa comes from the Düsseldorf start-up Cognigy from their own country. And Cognigy has already raised $69 million from investors. Customers include Bosch and Lufthansa.
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Even larger than Cognigy is the US group Replicant, which has already received $113 million from venture capitalists, according to data provider Crunchbase.
What’s next?
Parloa wants to put the fresh capital into growth and refine the technology. The company also plans to expand. “Next, we’re going to open an office in the US, and then there will be other countries in Europe,” says Kosub.
Parloa can rely on a strong partner. Because the Berliners work together with the US software giant Microsoft and use its cloud service Azure. The language model ChatGPT from Microsoft partner OpenAI is therefore already integrated. Parloa should score points with customers in view of the recent ChatGPT successes. The dialogue quality will achieve a breakthrough, predicts Ostwald.
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