Fielding customer messages, especially from those in need of urgent help or who are unsatisfied with their transaction, is essential for all businesses no matter the industry. Having staff to handle inquiries is ideal but can be time-consuming and infeasible, depending on the number of customer messages. It is now easier to automate some customer support tasks thanks to advanced technology like artificial intelligence (AI).
Boulder-based Stylo uses AI to augment customer support teams and help companies categorize and manage customer messages. The company recently closed a $3 million seed round led by local VC firm Matchstick Ventures as it looks to grow and expand its platform.
“We’re very excited about Stylo and their obsession with improving the lives of customer experience teams through data, AI and automation. Customer experience teams are critical to company success and deserve world-class products that make it easier to better serve and support their customers,” Natty Zola, a partner at Matchstick Ventures, said in a statement.
Co-founded in 2019 by CEO Austin Emser and CTO Josh Horowitz, Stylo’s software uses AI and advanced algorithms to interpret customer messages. The platform reads through messages and classifies them based on sentiment scores depending on urgency, frustration and other factors. Classifying messages is typically done by people but Stylo’s software is able to accurately rank customer messages on its own and detect the level of response needed.
According to the company, its software is also useful for messages that come in outside of working hours when customer support teams are no longer online.
Emser said he came up with the idea to launch Stylo after working in customer support and experiencing many challenges when responding to customer messages. Later, he worked in product development and began road-mapping ideas on how to help support teams.
“[Customer] support is under-resourced for the impact they make on the business. One of our main goals is to give support [teams] the same tools and resources that have been given to every other department for the better part of the decade,” Emser told Built In over email.
With the new capital, Stylo is looking to invest in its sales, marketing and engineering teams. Doing so will enable it to further support business-to-business clients with their customer support needs. Stylo plans to increase its current headcount of 15 over the next year.
