Ultimate.ai, a company specializing in the creation of virtual customer service agents, has successfully secured $20 million in Series A funding. This investment round was spearheaded by Omers Ventures, with additional participation from Felicis Ventures, alongside existing investors HV Capital and Maki.vc, bringing the total funding raised by the company to over $25 million.

The European-based startup’s core offering is a bot-building platform designed to automate a significant portion of customer support interactions – up to 80%, according to the company.

Like many conversational AI solutions for customer service, the primary aim is to relieve human support staff from handling routine and repetitive tasks, allowing them to concentrate on more intricate, advisory, or emotionally sensitive customer inquiries.

During a previous discussion with the Helsinki- and Berlin-based startup in 2018, when they raised $1.3 million in seed funding, they identified as a conversational AI platform independent of specific languages. They highlighted their initial work with the challenging Finnish language as providing a competitive advantage in markets beyond English-speaking regions. (The platform also supported English at that time.)

Currently, the startup’s marketing emphasizes its customer service automation platform as an “AI-first” and ‘no code’ solution, with the intention of enabling businesses to maximize the benefits of AI by designing virtual agents capable of managing complex customer interactions effectively.

The company positions itself as a guide in the process of developing highly capable customer service robots.

Co-founder and CEO Reetu Kainulainen states that the platform has always been designed to be “no code and intuitive,” although the term ‘no code’ now serves as a clear indicator of alignment with a broader trend in the business-to-business technology sector. (‘No code’ and ‘low code’ refer to a movement in digital tool creation that seeks to broaden access to powerful technologies like AI, removing the need for extensive technical expertise.)

“Our entire focus is on assisting users in creating the most effective virtual agents. The complete user experience – from initial exploration to design and ongoing improvement – is contained within ultimate.ai,” Kainulainen explained to TechCrunch.

“Over the past two years, we have concentrated on developing a comprehensive customer service automation platform – one that extends beyond simple FAQ responses in chat – and empowers businesses to create sophisticated, personalized workflows that can be implemented across all digital support channels.

“We anticipate that customer service automation will emerge as a distinct category in the future, and we are actively working to define its characteristics today.”

Kainulainen cites the platform’s “one click” integration with leading CRM systems, such as Salesforce and Zendesk, as an example. This allows customers to quickly import existing customer support data, which ultimate.ai’s platform analyzes to facilitate the creation of a useful bot.

“Users are immediately presented with an analysis of their most frequent customer service issues and an assessment of the potential impact of automation on their business,” he continued, noting that the platform provides templates and “best practices” to guide customers in designing their automation workflows – “specifically tailored to their unique situations and industry”.

Once a virtual agent is operational, users can conduct A/B tests through the platform to monitor and refine its performance. Furthermore, the platform offers ongoing support, with Kainulainen stating that it will “proactively suggest new scenarios and data to enhance the virtual agent”.

“We excel in serving large-scale customer support organizations that are seeking a holistic, advanced automation platform that can be managed and implemented by individuals without specialized technical skills,” he says.

“Our competitors generally have a more limited view of the opportunity than ultimate.ai does. Many focus solely on chatbots or are restricted to the ecosystem of their parent company. Our vision has always been broader: to establish automation as a primary method of delivering customer service.”

The platform’s multilingual capabilities remain a key strength, with ultimate.ai’s virtual agents currently able to handle interactions in over 20 languages.

“The customer service automation market is populated by numerous companies,” Kainulainen notes, mentioning Ada Support and Einstein Bots (Salesforce’s solution) as key competitors.

“This is due to the market’s recent emergence and, until recently, the low barriers to entry. However, the market has evolved significantly over the last four years. Now, only a handful of players globally are truly noteworthy, and we are among them.”

Founded in 2016, the startup is resonating with a growing number of customers – with nearly 100 currently utilizing its platform, including companies like Deezer, Telia, Footasylum, and Finnair. According to Kainulainen, the platform is most effective for “b2c brands with substantial (and often repetitive) customer service volumes”.

“This is where automation can deliver significant benefits immediately, freeing up personnel to focus on more creative and challenging work. We have a diverse customer base of close to 100 leading brands… and we perform particularly well in industries such as retail/ecommerce, telecommunications, and travel,” he adds.

The company has experienced substantial growth this year, as businesses across all sectors increased their focus on online customer interactions due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Customer retention has also become a higher priority for many businesses, as the pandemic and associated public health measures led to economic downturns, which Kainulainen identifies as another driver of growth.

Overall, the company has tripled its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) over the past 12 months (a similar growth rate was reported the previous year). It has also tripled its workforce to accommodate the increased demand.

Ultimate.ai is now preparing for further expansion, anticipating significant developments in the coming year.

“COVID-19 has… triggered one of the most rapid periods of change in the customer service industry,” Kainulainen says, predicting that 2021 will bring “substantial innovation” to the sector – and that “expanding” automation technologies will take “center stage”.

He acknowledges that this is a favorable narrative for a customer service chatbot provider.

However, COVID-19 is undeniably accelerating the digital transformation of consumer-facing businesses – a trend that logically increases demand for more intelligent tools to manage online customer support. Therefore, companies positioned to capitalize on this momentum for customer service automation – by offering an accessible, scalable, and effective product (as ultimate.ai claims to do) – are well-placed to succeed during the pandemic.

“We believe that the superior product will ultimately dominate this market,” Kainulainen adds. “We have an ambitious vision for the future of ultimate.ai. Market maturity for our technology has accelerated dramatically in 2020, achieving in one year what might have taken five. We will leverage this by continuing to innovate and expand our offerings.”

The Series A funding will be allocated to sales and marketing efforts, with plans for expansion into North America and further penetration of the European market, as well as continued investment in product development.

And while – understandably – not every b2c customer will be able to ‘automatically’ resolve 80% of their customer support inquiries, Kainulainen argues that ultimate.ai can still present a compelling value proposition to businesses with more “consultative” customer support needs, where automation will play a more limited role.

“There is often a strong relationship between the level of consultation required in customer service and the training and experience of the support team. In other words, organizations with limited automation potential often only need 10% automation to achieve a significant return on investment,” he suggests.

“For example, one of our customers is a large national pharmacy chain, where customer service agents are qualified pharmacists who provide prescription medical advice. In this case, the goal isn’t to achieve a high automation rate but rather to automate basic, repetitive processes to free up pharmacists for more complex tasks that utilize their expertise.

“For this customer, in addition to automating simple requests (which provides substantial value on its own), our real-time answer recommendations help pharmacists respond more quickly and efficiently.”

In a statement commenting on the Series A funding, Omers Ventures managing partner Jambu Palaniappan described the startup’s growth as “truly spectacular,” and praised its “world-class team” and founders “with a strong vision and unparalleled knowledge of AI”.

“There are many chatbot companies, but ultimate.ai represents something far greater – an automation company with immense potential,” he added. “We look forward to collaborating with Sarah, Reetu, Jaakko, and Markus as they expand internationally and further enhance their advanced product capabilities.”

“The customer service industry is undergoing an automation revolution. In ultimate.ai, we recognized a vision bold enough to lead the way,” added Aydin Senkut, founder and managing partner of Felicis Ventures, in a supporting statement. “We believe that, just as category leaders have defined marketing and sales automation, ultimate.ai will do the same for customer service.”

Jambu Palaniappan, managing partner at Omers Ventures, will join the ultimate.ai board. Aydin Senkut, founder and managing partner of Felicis Ventures, will join as an investor, alongside former head of Airbnb for Business Mark McCabe, and former EVP global sales of payment giant Adyen, Thijn Lamers.