Santa Clara, California-based Ushur Inc. has secured $25 million in fresh funding to help enterprises automate how they manage support requests and other customer interactions.

The investment, announced today, was led by Third Point Ventures with participation from 8VC.

Ushur provides a cloud service that enables enterprises to build artificial intelligence-powered chatbots to answer customer requests. The startup sets itself apart in the crowded chatbot segment by promising significantly faster deployment times than rivals. Ushur’s service doesn’t require users to write any code and makes it possible to set up an AI assistant in weeks rather than months as with alternative platforms, the startup claims.

“We have an orchestration platform, we call it a zero-code builder,” Ushur Chief Executive Officer Simha Sadasiva explained in an interview on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE studio last year. This zero-code builder “enables business teams to very quickly orchestrate their entire process flow, and then you couple this into your existing systems of records — whether they are standard platforms for customer service management or IT service management or HR management or vendor management.”

Chatbots created with Ushur can handle a variety of tasks, the startup says. They’re capable of answering frequently answered questions, providing price estimates and creating a support ticket on behalf of the user, among others. Ushur-powered chatbots can also double as a tool for sending out user surveys.

Ushur’s platform packs integrations that allow it to automate conversations across in-app support interfaces, email and Facebook Messenger, among other channels. The startup also offers related features to automate some of the other tasks involved providing customer service. Ushur has a tool that automatically routes customer emails to help desk agents based on a company’s internal policies, plus a pre-packaged frontend designed to spare firms the hassle of building a support app from scratch.

Ushur says its chatbots helps firm increase the quality of their customer service by making it possible to respond to inquiries immediately. According to the startup, the AI algorithms underpinning its platform can answer up to 70% of questions. In the process, the platform frees up time for help desk staff that they can spend on other tasks. 

It’s a value proposition that appears to be resonating in the market. Ushur boasts customers such as Atlassian Corp. Plc., Unum Group and Irish Life Assurance plc, Ireland’s largest manager of life assurance and pension assets.

Photo: Ushur