Operational intelligence helps contact centers determine what customers really need

A business may have a good contact center, but ideally they are able to help customers before they need to make a call. Operational intelligence helps contact centers determine what customers want faster, improving automated requests 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 spent 25 years working in customer service and contact centers.

Over 10 years ago, James developed a methodology to find out why customers were calling a major Australian health insurance company. At that time, contact center systems did not have this information. So James developed a manual system to analyze thousands of post-it notes transcribed by contact center representatives from customer calls. These notes were analyzed by a team using the “5 whys” system to find the root cause of a problem. As a result, James was able to help this contact center increase his net promoter score by 5x.

The brothers continued to work on their method with high-growth technology companies, and three years ago they began looking for a way to turn it into a software system.

"What we found 10 years later was that every contact center we had worked in was still having the same issues and there was still no solution on the market to 'get the kind of insights contact centers and enterprises need to better meet the needs of their customers at scale,' Peter, CEO of Operative Intelligence, told TechCrunch.

Operational intelligence provides contact centers with data on why their customers are contacting them without having to spend time sifting through different data sources. The fully automated platform analyzes customer inquiries through multiple channels, including phone calls, emails, chat, web inquiries, social media, online reviews, and customer warranty requests. Then, it provides root cause reports on why customers contact companies.

Its platform also divides customer requests into priority lists. One details customer pain points and what they cost the company each year in service costs. Another relates to inquiries that can be completed through self-service and its potential return on investment. Operative Intelligence also produces reports on contact center performance by location, team and requests, and agent efficiency by request type.

One of Operative Intelligence's customers used their data to prioritize fixing customer issues over rolling out new features, which James says resulted in a 32% reduction in its call volume and a seven-digit reduction in the cost of service. Another moved more than half of 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 are 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 request, requires no model training or business branding of data, and has ROI built into its insights. . It can be deployed by a company in two weeks.

In a statement on Bonfire Ventures' investment, Managing Director Mark Mullen said, "James and Peter have designed an intuitive solution to improve the customer experience at a time of heightened need. We look forward to their next moves to use AI technology to reshape untapped space."