Germany’s Parloa raises €20M to transform how companies use AI for customer service

Berlin-based Parloa, a Conversational AI platform for automating omnichannel customer service, announced on Thursday that it has raised  €20M in a Series A round of funding.

The round was led by Swedish investment firm EQT Ventures. Existing investors Amsterdam-based Newion and Munich-based Senovo also participated in this round. 

Parloa’s notable investors also include German unicorn founders such as Erik Muttersbach and Michael Wax (Forto), Hanno Renner (Personio,) Nicolas Peters (Signavio), German contact center entrepreneur Jens Bormann (Muuuh! Group) as well as soccer professional and business angel Mario Götze.

Transforming how businesses use AI for client support

According to Parloa, many companies are struggling to find technology to provide better customer support operations. And using automatic customer service is still an unpleasant experience for all parties involved.

Customers complain about long wait times and “bad bots”, and businesses battle to satisfy both customers and employees while facing a labour shortage.

Using Parloa’s network, companies can grow by speaking with thousands of consumers at once.

Founded in 2018 by Malte Kosub and Stefan Ostwald, Parloa is an AI company that focuses on automating customer support with natural conversations that lessen annoyance and boost high-volume efficiency.

The company’s Contact Center AI platform leverages technology to extend natural-sounding customer conversations across all relevant support platforms, reducing time-to-resolution, and improving customer and staff experiences.

Additionally, Parloa’s AI can communicate in everyday English, come up with its own responses to queries, and solve issues caused by rigid, excessively scripted response systems.

This helps call centre employees be free from their tedious, repetitive tasks and enables them to concentrate on more demanding, high-touch, high-value interactions.

Currently, Parloa employs more than 100 people and its customers include insurance companies ERGO, Helvetia, Swiss Life, and AdmiralDirekt; retail companies Decathlon, HSE, and Thalia; Teamviewer; and the German Red Cross.

Capital utilisation

Parloa says that the funds will help the company to accelerate the expansion of its AI speech application internationally.

Co-founder Malte Kosub says, “Our platform is already demonstrating the tremendous value AI tools bring to customer service — in very simple, groundbreaking ways. This represents a huge opportunity for companies, their employees, and their customers — and shows the immediate applicability and value of AI.”

“Customer contact is a multi-billion dollar global market – and one of the first to be disrupted by AI. We have found an experienced international investor in EQT Ventures, who are actively supporting our further development and global expansion,” adds Kosub.

Collaboration with Microsoft

Parloa is a Microsoft partner, and its infrastructure is hosted on Microsoft Azure. This collaboration gives Parloa customers immediate access to the OpenAI language model in Azure.

“Microsoft and Parloa share a commitment to help empower customers to revolutionise customer service with sophisticated digital solutions,” says Charles Lamanna, Corporate VP, Business Applications & Platform at Microsoft.

“With the global scale and advanced AI capabilities in Azure, Parloa and our joint Digital Contact Center Platform customers will see tangible business value,” adds Lamanna.

Parloa claims to integrate a wide range of AI components, such as its own AI modules, and substantial language models like the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) via Azure OpenAI Service. 

With Parloa, businesses can quickly adjust their user experience to their unique knowledge and requirements in order to work as effectively as possible within their own processes.