Berlin-based artificial intelligence customer service automation platform Parloa GmbH said today it has raised $66 million in early-stage funding to build out its contact center AI capabilities and expand into new markets.

The Series B funding round was led by Altimeter Capital, with participation from new and existing investors including EQT Ventures, Newion, Senovo, Mosaic Ventures and La Famiglia Growth. Today’s raise brings the company’s total funding to $98 million, including an extended Series A round led by EQT Ventures totaling $27 million in 2023.

Founded in 2018 in Berlin by Stefan Oswald (pictured, left) and Malte Kosub (right), Parloa uses generative AI to empower contact centers to automate tedious customer service actions with more “human-like” responses. Currently, the contact center experience is slow, cumbersome and painful – not just for customers dealing with automated systems that barely understand them, but also for agents who must deal with repetitive tasks.

Parola works across multiple channels, including phone, text and messenger to provide customers and agents with a conversational experience using generative AI. The underlying models are capable of delivering dynamic, personalized and humanlike experiences, thereby reducing wait times and automating away busy work that could be done by a machine – such as changing addresses, answering simple questions and resolving simple tickets. Anything that the AI cannot help with it can be passed along to a human agent.

Key features of Parloa’s platform include the capability to infer customer intent by listening to speech context in voice and routing them to the right agents after authentication. The service also integrates with all the data sources that an enterprise has access to so it can automatically and easily deal with frequently asked questions, customers experience no wait time and get their questions answered immediately.

Customers can use the AI for self-service, including end-to-end processes such as ordering, returns, change of address, and any other automated processes that would normally be a long wait for an agent to help them fulfill. Wait times are one of the biggest complaints that many customers have when dealing with service and lead to the biggest loss of customer retention for many companies.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Malte Kosub said the financing round would allow the company to “make a significant leap forward in improving the customer service experience for everyone and setting new standards for the communication between customers and enterprises.” The funds will also help the company expand within new markets, including Europe and the United States.

The news comes after the company entered into the U.S. by opening its first office outside Europe in New York in 2023. The company said that it has formed strategic partnerships with the global consulting firms KPMG LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Parloa also works closely with Microsoft Corp. and uses its Azure cloud for infrastructure.

Photo: Parloa