VirtuOz solutions transform the customer support and sales experience online by providing intelligent virtual agents that interact with customers via chat and instant messaging. The agents enable ubiquitous, personal and natural interactions between humans and Internet-based services on a 24/7 basis. The combination of artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies make the agents capable of understanding a complete range of user requests and comments. The agents welcome, guide, assist, and inform customers and are able to reach specific sales objectives by proposing a personalized and direct link when appropriate.
VirtuOz, the provider of intelligent, multilingual virtual support and sales agent solutions, today announced the completion of its Series B round of investment. MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures led the $11.4 million financing. Galileo Partners, which has funded the company since the beginning of its operations, participated in this round, as did Eric Hahn with Inventures Group. The new funds will be used to scale operations and advance product development.
“VirtuOz agents are extremely intelligent and have demonstrated in the financial services, Telco, and online retail/e-commerce industries an effortless ability to handle sales or support functions that require a precise understanding of a person’s question or request,” said MDV Partner David Feinleib. “The customer care and online sales markets combined represent a spend of $600 billion a year worldwide, and are served predominantly by call centers with a high rate of churn. Intelligent virtual agents are a compelling alternative as they improve customer satisfaction while reducing support costs.”
VirtuOz was founded in 2002 by a team of engineers and linguists in Paris to address the emerging web based self-service market. Since that time the company has moved its headquarters to San Francisco, CA and expanded its footprint in Europe and Asia. VirtuOz has installed over 25 virtual agent solutions in 7 languages worldwide.
“After closing our first round of funding we achieved our objective of becoming a leading player in combining artificial intelligence and natural language processing to enable productive conversations between humans and Internet-based services. We established a track record of strong financial performance, including profitability for our European operations,” said VirtuOz CEO and co-founder Alexandre Lebrun. “The Series B funding gives us the opportunity to deliver our technologies to a broader set of customers worldwide who are faced with sky-rocketing support costs. We have customers who have achieved reductions in email volumes up to 50% while improving resolution rates and increasing customer satisfaction.”
