Zendesk wants to expand its customer service capabilities and today announced that it had acquired Cleverly, an early-stage startup in artificial intelligence.
The financial terms of the deal have not been made public. Cleverly also has not disclosed the amount of its funding. Cleverly was founded in 2019 and is located in Lisbon, Portugal. According to the site, it has received funding through Horizon 2020, an EU research and innovation programme.
TechCrunch also featured the startup in an article that was published earlier in the year. It was cited by Stephan Morais, partner at Indico Capital Partners, as one of the most exciting deep-tech companies in Lisbon.
Cleverlys platform offers a variety of artificial intelligence-powered capabilities. This includes a triage function that automatically tags incoming service requests in order to help categorize workflow. With its agent assistance capability, Cleverly also offers AI-powered human enhancement. This aims to assist customer service agents in providing the best answers to their inquiries. The company's technology integrates with Zendesk and Salesforce.
In an email to TechCrunch, Shawna Wolverton (EVP of product, Zendesk) stated that Cleverly and Zendesk share a similar vision of the future of customer services.
Cleverly and Zendesk are democratizing AI so that companies can develop practical applications that allow them to get started with AI without the need for a team or data scientists, she stated.
Wolverton stated that AI can help customer service teams deliver exceptional customer service. Intelligent software will enable humans and AI to work together to create the next generation of customer experiences.
Wolverton stated that Cleverlys will be welcoming all Cleverlys employees to Zendesk starting August 30, with founders Christina Fonseca, VP of Product, and Pedro Coelho, principal engineer lead, Machine Learning.
Zendesk already offers a number of AI-enabled capabilities to help companies automate customer communications, increase agent productivity, and increase operational efficiency. This includes the Answer Bot which is a chatbot that provides answers from Zendesks knowledgebase. Zendesks Content Cues AI powered feature helps to automatically review support tickets, and can also identify areas in which content in a company's help center could be updated to make it more useful for users.
We will offer a variety of capabilities with Cleverly that automate key insights and further reduce manual tasks. This will lead to happier support teams and more productive employees, Wolverton stated. Once the team is operational, we will share more information.
Zendesks reported a 29% increase in revenue for the second quarter fiscal 2021, with $318.2million representing a 29% gain year-over-year.
