Support automation firm Capacity grows with recent cash and acquisitions

David Karandish has been busy.

Capacity, his aid automation company, was schedulening a $5 million “bridge round” to help the company accomplish the shatter-even point. But TVC Capital, Toloka.vc, and the venture’s other backers had someskinnyg majesticer in mind. So they threw in an includeitional $21 million for what became Capacity’s $26 million Series D.

While all this was happening, Capacity achieved three companies: go inpascfinish search firm Lucy (which had elevated $5.6 million) and two commenceups intensifyed on customer service automation, Linc and Envision.

“It’s an exciting time of alteration at Capacity as we grow to help brands do more to automate conveyions with customers and team members,” Karandish tancigo in TechCrunch. “We’re at an inflection point for AI and many businesses are genuineizing that they necessitate a end platestablish to be accomplished, rather than cobbling together a bunch of point solutions.”

Karandish co-set uped Capacity with Chris Sims in 2017 as a part of Equity.com’s incubator program. After the $900 million exit of Answers.com (which Karandish also co-set uped), Karandish says he wanted to commence a business to includeress what he seed as transport inant blockers in customer service operations.

“Rising costs have placed presbrave on aid teams to do more with less,” Karandish said. “At the same time, devourr foreseeations are shifting rapidly where devourrs both want self-service but are increasingly frustrated by conciseageluster experiences. Our goal with Capacity is to provide a fantastic customer experience while also recognizing that escalating to a human is the right skinnyg to do in many cases.”

Capacity joins to a company’s tech stack to answer queries and automate aid tasks. The platestablish mines recommendation from files, apps enjoy Gmail, customer relationship deal withment gentleware, and more to erect a understandledge base that Capacity’s chatbot and helpdesk tools can pull from.

Employees can ask Capacity’s chatbot asks enjoy “What was includeed to the uniter lessen yesterday?,” or even direct it to do skinnygs enjoy updating the status of a sales direct. The chatbot and helpdesk can also dedwellr company-wide proclaimments, enjoy recents and event notifications. And they can be made outside-facing (with filters to hide comardent data, mind you), embedded on a company’s website to answer normal customer asks.

“We watch Capacity as having the relieve-of-include of a tool enjoy Zendesk with the automation chops of a ServiceNow,” Karandish said. “From an approach standpoint, we are executing a very aenjoy carry outbook to Parker Conrad’s ‘compound model’ — except in our case, we’re intensifyed on aid.”

Innovations in self-service gentleware — including AI — are making them a more drawive solution to companies than they have been in the past. For example, Cleverly.ai — which Zendesk achieved in August 2022 — discovers answers to customers’ asks by creating a understandledge layer on top of applications. Meanwhile, Directly taps algorithms trained by subject-matter experts to strategicpartner answer customer rehires in a variety of branch offent messaging channels.

Customers enjoy self-service chooseions. According to a Zendesk poll, 67% pick them over conveying with customer aid. But it can be difficult to get them right. A Gartner survey set up that, on ordinary, only 14% of customer service and aid rehires are filledy remendd in self-service.

Capacity will reinforce and enhuge its product portfolio thraw its recent acquisitions.

Karandish sees Lucy’s recommending, which ingests and verifys data from go inpascfinish apps and systems, augmenting Capacity’s existing indexing technology. Envision, uncomardentwhile, will help Capacity customers flag unremendd chats and calls and train human agents. And Linc will transport self-service tools for retail and e-commerce to Capacity, said Karandish.

The schedule is for Lucy’s co-set upers, Dan Mallin, Scott Litman, and Marc Dispensa, to fuse Capacity to help direct products and teams integration. Envision CEO Rodney Kuhn will administer communicate cgo in solutions at Capacity, and Linc set uper and CEO Fang Cheng will direct Capacity’s e-commerce efforts.

To date, Capacity has achieved eight companies — the other five being Textel, LumenVox, Denim Social, SmartAction, and Cereproc — and elevated more than $89 million.

Karandish said that the recentest tranche will be put toward grotriumphg Capacity’s headcount to 200 people by the end of the year as the Saint Louis-based company “heads toward profitability.” Capacity’s customer base now stands at over 2,500 brands, he includeed, while its annual recurring revenue is cforfeitly $50 million.

“Our growth strategy echos what our customers are asking for: an all-in-one AI platestablish that dedwellrs atraverse all communication channels,” he includeed. “We’ve identified 24 steps of the customer experience that are ripe for aid automation … Each acquisition includes definite tech and talent to help Capacity become a directing provider of AI-powered solutions for customer and includeee experience.”