AI-Powered Agent Coaching Platform Zenarate Raises $15 Million

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Brian Tuite, running a contact center of 5,000 agents, frequently encountered the problem of providing basic training to new agents. In his words, they weren’t ready for success, and they had exhausted contact center resources.

So Tuite came up with the idea of ​​creating what he calls “simulation training” for customer service agents. After proposing to Rab Govil, he and his Govil decided to turn the concept into a company, Zenarate.

“Zenarate is an AI simulation training platform,” Tuite explained in an email interview. “It’s a ‘flight simulator’ for agents facing customers and prospects, where agents in training are immersed in realistic simulations of conversations, screens, and chats, interacting with real customers and prospects.” Master the high-impact topics you’ll be facing.”

Using Zenarate’s AWS-hosted platform, service agents work with an “AI coach” to provide feedback on the service agent’s tone and soft skills, and make suggestions as needed. Agents get a scorecard that shows they’ve mastered specific areas and met basic requirements such as transitioning from service to sales, handling multiple chats simultaneously, and addressing customers by name.

AI coaches can present random call scenarios and force agents to think for themselves. Alternatively, customer service managers can assign specific scenarios to specific agents or teams.

“There is no IT integration for agents to role-play with AI coaches from their homes or offices,” said Tuite, highlighting the benefits of the Zenarate platform. “The only IT requirements are a Chrome or Edge browser and a headset. And since all content is fictitious training data, no personal or account information is required for testing or implementation.”

Of course, Zenarate isn’t particularly unique in the market for sales and agent training software. Polaris Research forecasts that this market will be worth $7.74 billion by 2032. Rival Vervoe similarly offers “AI-powered” software that agents can use in a variety of preparations. Type of live call. So does Second Nature, which raised an investment from Zoom’s Apps Fund early last year.

I’m also wary of how companies like Zenarate are applying AI. It can open the door to prejudice, whether intentional or not. For example, some AIs trained to detect toxicity disproportionately “harm” phrases in African-American Specific English (AAVE), an informal grammar used by some black Americans. Studies have shown that we perceive that It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where black customer service agents repeatedly score lower than white agents on certification tests because of the language they use. (No need to imagine, it actually happens.)

Zenarate claims its AI is unbiased. However, Tuite only ensures that the platform’s AI models are trained using each client’s “best and required practices” data, and that the client is responsible for overseeing model training. and didn’t provide much detail about Zenarate’s debiasing measures. It costs anything.

Image credit: Zena Latte

Even if investors share these concerns, they don’t show them. Zenarate today announced it has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Volition Capital, with participation from a number of private angel investors.

According to Volition’s Sean Cantwell, Zenarate’s forward-looking unit economics played a key role. Zenarate’s annual recurring revenue is currently hovering in “double digits,” driven by his strong customer base of over 80 companies with “over a million” users.

“There is tremendous growth opportunity to disrupt traditional passive training methods with the power of simulation training,” added Cantwell. “AI-powered simulation is the new standard in customer service and sales training, and Zenarate is leading the way.”

Palo Alto-based Zenarate plans to use most of the new funding (which brings the total raised to $18 million) to expanding its workforce from 92 to 110 by the end of the year.