Ushur, a company developing conversational AI and business automation solutions, today raised $25 million. In a press release, the company said the fresh capital would be used to accelerate its sales and marketing efforts.
With customer representatives increasingly required to work from home in Manila, the U.S., and elsewhere, companies are turning to AI to bridge resulting gaps in service. Moreover, the pandemic has bolstered the demand for process discovery and automation. Forrester estimates that robotic process automation (RPA) and related subfields created jobs for 40% of companies in 2019. According to a McKinsey survey, at least a third of activities could be automated in about 60% of occupations, which might be why Market and Markets anticipates the RPA market alone will be worth $493 billion by 2022.
Ushur’s products engage customers over email, apps, text, Facebook Messenger, and more using machine learning and business process automation workflows. They feature a visual builder, tools for data extraction, and integrations with backend systems like Salesforce and ServiceNow as well as legacy systems. With Usher, companies can measure the outcomes of engagements with analytics for auditing campaign results. Moreover, Ushur has the ability to translate over 60 languages, giving companies the ability to reach customers in more than 190 countries.
Usher offers a virtual assistant that supports communications across virtually any channel, reaching out to customers, understanding what they need, and automatically taking the next steps. Meanwhile, the startup’s automated email processing system analyzes thousands of incoming emails, categorizes, and classifies them based on predetermined rules, auto-responding to each sender and forwarding.
Ushur’s no-code builder is a web-based portal to build, deploy, and track active automations. Different modules allow users to build a workflow and automate types of actions or tasks including customer interactions, data exchange, file uploads, optical character recognition, and more with drag-and-drop tools. As for Ushur’s FlowBuilder, it’s powered by what the company calls a “language intelligence service architecture” (LISA). Using natural language processing, topic classification, data extraction, and sentiment analysis, LISA extracts meaning from conversations and brings intelligence to automations. Beyond this, Ushur’s SmartMail allows its insurance clients to process high volumes of customer, agent, and broker email automatically, allowing carriers to ostensibly respond faster and more efficiently.
Ushur, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, says its customers include brands like HealthSpire, Irish Life, and Unum. This series B fundraising was led by Point Ventures with participation from existing investor 8VC, and it brings Ushur’s total raised to date to $36 million.
