Arthur wants to be the future of the contact centre

by Startacus Admin

Arthur aims to use AI where AI is best used, so that customer care agents in a contact centre can focus on what's important. Human-centric artificial intelligence! 

Customer service isn’t just about trying to deal with people who have fallen for the old ‘customer is always right’ nonsense; it’s flicking between different tools, documentation, accounts, looking up information, following the trail of an issue, determining how to fix the issue, and then finding the best wording for the customer.

Answers must be grammatically correct, accurate, contain the information to show that what you are telling them is right, but without imparting anything that isn’t for public knowledge. It’s not difficult, per se, but can be stressful and exhausting. Checking and double checking means that each ticket or chat or call that comes into the customer service department takes that bit longer and fewer customers are answered than technically could be.

This is where Dublin-based machine learning startup EdgeTier comes in with their artificial intelligence customer support system, Arthur.

Arthur is designed to limit the amount of clicking between tabs, windows, and tools, gathering as much of the information the customer service agent will need as it can into one window. The artificial intelligence fetches and fills in as much data as possible from each customer, and provides you with contextual information for the customer’s complaint (if their question is ‘why can’t I log in?’, then Arthur will tell you up front that the customer has a ban on their account, for example).

It will also guide you through responses with suggested answers which are, of course, free of errors. Because this is a human working alongside an AI, you can ensure these responses are highly personalised so that the customer doesn’t feel that they are getting a ‘canned’ response.

Arthur works in multiple languages, across different platforms, and gives the engineers raw data exports and database access for custom reporting and root-cause analysis. It has already been used by clients such as AIB, Tesco Mobile, and Electric Ireland.

In 2018, EdgeTier was shortlisted for Best Technology Innovation of the Year in the Technology Ireland Awards, won the AI Ireland Awards 2018 for Best use of Artificial Intelligence in a Startup, and won the DatSci Award 2018 for Best use of Data Science in a Startup.

Most recently, it has won Google’s Adopt a Startup programme, which gives it €10,000 in Google Ads credit and eligibility for the Google Cloud Platform for startups, with $100,000 of Google Cloud Credit. This after securing €1.5m in seed funding round from the UK and Irish-based investors.

All in all, they seem to be doing pretty well and we look forward to seeing what comes next for them. To Arthur!

If you like the sound of this customer focused startup, you might want to read:

Doopoll to make polls and surveys great again

MyCustomerLens wants to help you reach & retain more customers

Subscribe to our newsletter

If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.

• #contact centre
• #call centre
• #customer service
• #ai
• #artificial intelligence
• #arthur
• #edgetier
• #dublin
• #machine learning

Published on: 21st July 2019