Seattle, WA August 3rd, 2017 - AnswerIQ, an AI-powered service for customer support, today announced Series A financing of $5 million from Madrona Venture Group. The company offers an artificial intelligence service to resolve customer support tickets to increase efficiency and accuracy while reducing costs. The company, led by CEO Pradeep Rathinam and CTO Prashant Luthra, leverages the customer support intelligence service of Wise.io, which was acquired by GE Digital last year, and is at the core of the new entity. GE Ventures holds an equity position in AnswerIQ.
"Companies Have Seen Up to 40% Improvement in Customer Support Agents’
Productivity with AnswerIQ"
“Customer support is a crucial touchpoint with consumers, but it can be hard to manage and costs can quickly grow out of control,” said Pradeep Rathinam, Founder and CEO of AnswerIQ. “By bringing AI together with the human touch we are able to speed up responses, make agents more productive and save time and money for consumer focused global companies.”
AnswerIQ already works with global companies such as Groupon and Thumbtack to speed up responses and increase accuracy of customer support agents. AnswerIQ is particularly effective for companies with over 10,000 support tickets a month and integrates with popular service desk systems like Zendesk and Salesforce Service Cloud.
“We strongly believe that AI technologies will transform our lives. Customer support which brings together organized information, human interactions and a clear business need stands out as one of the most tangible applications of this technology and we are excited to be investing in this team and technology,” said S. Somasegar, managing director, Madrona Venture Group. “Pradeep and Prashant are serial entrepreneurs with a deep passion for building a solution that works for customers and end users.” As part of the financing, S.Somasegar will join the AnswerIQ board. Additionally, Wise.io CEO, and VP, Intelligent Systems at GE Digital, Jeff Erhardt also joins the board as part of GE’s equity position. In addition Amit Mittal from Kernel labs also joins the board of the company.
AnswerIQ is a great example of how machine learning can be practically applied to the enterprise,” said Amit Mital, CEO of Kernel Labs, and former Technical Advisor for Wise.io. “AnswerIQ enables major companies with large volumes of tickets to recognize cost savings instantly, while also improving their customer support experience.” Mital will join the board of AnswerIQ as part of the financing.
“AnswerIQ was born out of the successful acquisition of Wise.io. We recognized that the technology had great applications in areas that went beyond GE’s core industrial market strategy. Through GE Ventures’ Licensing team, we were able to incubate and spin out an innovative AI service company, with incredible technology and a very knowledgeable team,” Pat Patnode, President of Licensing and Technology Ventures at GE Ventures.
For more on AnswerIQ please visit www.answeriq.com.
About AnswerIQ
AnswerIQ applies artificial intelligence to the challenge of customer support. Integrating with top service desk solutions like Zendesk and Salesforce Service Cloud, AnswerIQ makes customer support agents more efficient and automates basic functions. AnswerIQ's investors are Madrona Venture Group, Kernel Labs and GE Ventures and the company is based in Seattle.
