A business may have a good contact center, but ideally they can help customers before they need to make a call. Operational Intelligence helps contact centers discover what customers want faster, improving automated inquiries and reducing wait times. The Melbourne and Los Angeles-based startup announced today that it has raised $3,5 million in seed funding led by Bonfire Ventures with participation from Wonder Ventures.
Operative Intelligence was founded in 2019 by brothers Peter and James Ianesk, who have been working in customer service and contact centers for 25 years.
Over 10 years ago, James developed a methodology to find out why customers were calling a large Australian health insurer. At the time, contact center systems didn't have that information, so James devised a manual system to analyze thousands of Post-It notes transcribed by contact center representatives from customer calls. Those notes were analyzed by a team using the “5 whys” to find the root cause of a problem. As a result, James was able to help that contact center increase their net NPS rating by 5 times.
The brothers continued to work on their method with high-growth technology companies, and three years ago began looking for a way to turn it into a software system.
“What we found 10 years later was that all of the contact centers we had worked in were still experiencing the same issues and there was still no solution on the market that would come up with the kind of knowledge that contact centers and businesses need to better meet the needs of their customers at scale,” said the CEO of Operative Intelligence.
Operational intelligence provides contact centers with insight into why their customers are contacting them without the need to waste time switching between different data sources. The fully automated platform analyzes customer inquiries through various channels, including phone calls, emails, chat, web requests, social media, online reviews, and customer warranty requests. Then, it delivers reports on the root causes of why customers contact businesses.
Their platform also breaks down customer inquiries into prioritized lists. One details customer pain points and what they cost the company each year in service costs. Another is the questions that can be completed through self-service and their potential return on investment. Operational Intelligence also produces reports on contact center performance by site, team, and inquiry, and agent effectiveness by inquiry type.
One of Operative Intelligence's customers used their data to prioritize resolving customer issues rather than rolling out new features, which James said resulted in a 32% reduction in call volume and a reduction of seven figures in the cost of the service. Another moved more than half its call volume to digital channels and reduced time spent on phone calls by 23%, using best practices identified by Operative Intelligence.
The startup's main competitors include NICE Nexidia, CallMiner and Call Journey. James said that Operative Intelligence differentiates itself as the only platform that can automatically identify the root cause of a customer inquiry, requires no model training or business data labeling, and has ROI built into its insights. It can be implemented by a company in two weeks.
In an investment statement from Bonfire Ventures, Managing Director Mark Mullen said: “James and Peter have created an intuitive solution to improve the customer experience at a time of increasing need. We look forward to their next moves to use AI technology to reshape an untapped space.”
