Parloa raises $66 million to power its conversational AI-Based customer care platform!

The processing capacity of LLMs is increasing as new investors come into play and change the landscape in which they are developed and trained, achieving substantial advances in technology focused on much more human communication. That is the goal and everything seems to be moving in the right direction.

Let's remember that Large Language Models (LLMs) are large and complex models based on artificial intelligence and trained with a large amount of data that is supplied to them, expanding their knowledge cloud to process a request made by a person. Of course, this is a somewhat simplified way of referring to this constantly developing technology, otherwise we would have to resort to very difficult technical terms to understand.

If we were to think of a type of use, customer service would be one of them. More and more people are interacting with computer systems to make inquiries, resolve doubts, or problems. In fact, if we pay attention, technology has made every company adapt to this new era, so it is very likely that you have experienced this in your daily life. Carrying out procedures, inquiries, or any situation in which customer service should be involved likely involves the use of new technologies to a greater or lesser extent.

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Parloa official site

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Parloa appears as a customer service-oriented platform, with the interesting particularity that their platform features conversational AI. It is also noteworthy for being focused on the use of voice. This is highlighted by Malte Kosub, CEO and co-founder of the company, who asserts that voice conversations based on AI have a positive impact on the customer experience.

After receiving a $21 million investment from European investors, the company surprises again with a $66 million investment in a Series B funding round. Altimer Capital emerges as the main sponsor, having had significant involvement in investments towards prestigious companies like Uber, Airbnb, or HubSpot among others. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that Parloa is a German company currently located in the U.S., with an office in New York; something that could be seen as a strategic move due to the business-friendly registration process.

Highly sophisticated language models like LLMs are distinct (although they can be mistaken) from chatbots in that the latter are merely pre-programmed chat interactions. In other words, the responses are predetermined in the code and are typically used to handle customer inquiries as an additional way to access customer service.

Clearly, the experience will not be the same, as many times specific doubts may not be resolved, and one might have to resort to making a phone call for a human to address the questions or issues at hand. In my opinion, chatbots are useful for obtaining information, but not for delving deep into solving a problem, as it often requires repetitive questioning until one is satisfied; something that chatbots do not seem very adept at. Generative AI is more likely to achieve this.

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Parloa official site

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Other startups aiming to be high-level have received significant investments, such as Kore.ai, with a $150 million investment from one of the most recognized sponsors in the industry; Nvidia. On the other hand, Sierra is another company related to customer service, and has raised over $100 million. This could signify a noteworthy advancement in the fintech area, which could undoubtedly revolutionize how we handle our queries and lead to outstanding service, much more akin to human.

Parloa is currently used by major firms, such as Swiss Life. A large European insurance company that uses the platform to automatically communicate with clients through emails and instant messaging.

What to say? The experience one may need to have can be much more encouraging and leave behind communication problems that didn't seem to work, and that were even stress generators. However, we may lose human contact in doing so, or as a negative point, we may not differentiate whether the attention being offered is from a human or a constantly developing bot.