Observe.AI raises $54M Series B funding to disrupt the $300 billion voice customer service market with artificial intelligence

It’s been a while since we wrote about Observe.AI, a customer service voice analytics startup that is using AI-powered agent enablement for voice customer service by bringing coaching and conversational insights to the world’s top brands to improve the customer experience. Late last year, the San Francisco-based startup raised $26 million Series A financing to expand its US-India team globally and accelerate product development.

In the last 12 months alone, Observe.AI has grown the team to 100 people and brought on more than 150 customers, including Assurant, Alcon Laboratories, and Tripadvisor. During this time, Observe.AI added over 20,000 agent licenses to its platform and grew revenue by 600%.

Today, Observe.AI announced it has raised a $54 million Series B financing led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Next47 Ventures, and NGP Capital. The funding will allow Observe.AI to continue its momentum by helping the world’s top brands accurately transcribe and analyze every call while providing deeper visibility into customer service operations. Alongside the investment round, Observe.AI also announced that Steve Sloane, Partner at Menlo Ventures, will be joining its board of directors.

With the funding, Observe.AI plans to expand its go-to-market programs. The company will also continue to invest in R&D to add new capabilities in the areas of real-time coaching, omnichannel support, and interaction analytics. The Series B financing brings the company’s total funding to $88 million, including $80 million in the last 12 months, showcasing strong investor confidence in Observe.AI and the importance of enhancing voice customer experiences.

Founded in May 2017 by Akash Singh, Sharath Keshava, and Swapnil Jain, Observe.AI already boasts one of the largest call centers in the U.S. among its customers. Observe.AI is used by more than 100 customers and partners, including, Tripadvisor, Microsoft, ERCBPO, Talkdesk, and more. The startup is backed by Scale Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Y Combinator, and Emergent Ventures.

“Today’s contact center is mired with inefficient workflows and lack of data-driven training for frontline agents who represent the voice of the company,” said Swapnil Jain, CEO, and co-founder of Observe.AI. “By leveraging AI to analyze customer interactions, businesses will turn their contact centers into growth centers. This latest round of funding is a direct result of the trust we’ve built with customers and investors, and the dedication of our team.”

Traditionally, contact centers analyze just 1-2% of calls by manually listening to them and are left with little time and resources to coach agents or celebrate top performance. Observe.AI leverages AI to automatically surface opportunities that improve the customer experience and better support frontline agents. With Observe.AI, businesses streamline their quality assurance workflows while uncovering unmet customer needs and compliance gaps.

“As top brands continue to demand AI-powered solutions to support their frontline agents, automate workflows, and unlock customer intelligence from calls, we are pleased to see Observe.AI continue to gain traction and the confidence of financial markets,” said Shaloo Garg, Managing Director, Microsoft for Start-Ups. “We look forward to leading Observe.AI up-market as they expand their Contact Center AI solution and develop their speech-to-text and Natural Language Processing capabilities with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services.”