Israeli startup TechSee, which develops an AI-powered visual assistance platform, announced a $30 million Series C funding round. The investment was led by OurCrowd, TELUS Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures, with Scale Venture Partners and Planven Entrepreneur Ventures, also getting on the round.
"Remote Visual Assistance is becoming an imperative technology for any customer-centric enterprise operating at scale," said Alex Kayyal, Partner & Head of International, Salesforce Ventures. "The potential upside for the business and the customer is difficult to ignore. This industry has fundamentally shifted, and we're excited by the innovation TechSee is bringing to the market in the area of customer assistance."
Visual customer service
TechSee develops technology that provides enterprises with a contactless solution that upgrades their customer experience offering. By utilizing Visual Assistance technology, friction points in service are minimized through real-time AR guidance displayed on the phone or tablet of the customer and the technician. The platform allows enterprises to easily guide customers’ problems to a solution, and all done by remote.
TechSee’s platform combines Computer Vision AI with technology that can provide visual guidance to users installing, operating, or troubleshooting networking devices, smart home products, home appliances, and more. TechSee's AI platform can automatically identify components, ports, cables, LED indicators, and more to detect issues and suggest resolutions for consumers, contact center agents, and field technicians. Essentially, the company is aiming to assure that you’ll never have to call a handyman or service agent again, instead, everything becomes a DIY AI project.
No more user manuals, the era of AR has come
TechSee's solutions have become critical during the COVID-19 pandemic as enterprises seek ways to resolve customers' issues without jeopardizing health and safety; dispatching field service technicians or allowing them to enter people's homes is, in many cases, no longer viable. Even when in-person visits are feasible, businesses are actively seeking ways to reduce truck rolls in favor of remote resolutions that are more cost-effective and efficient.
"There has been a significant increase in demand for contactless customer service technologies propelled by COVID-19 social distancing requirements and the acceleration of digital transformation projects," said Eitan Cohen, CEO of TechSee. "Our Visual Automation technology is at the heart of it, and now that momentum is growing exponentially as businesses seek to reduce costs and optimize customer experience strategies in the current environment. Our vision is to get rid of the user manual and replace it with dynamic AR assistants."
TechSee claims to address many of the issues that have traditionally plagued contact centers and field service operations. Its technology reduces customer effort, cuts costly truck rolls and product returns, improves the productivity and efficiency of support agents and technicians, and decreases call volume by enhancing self-service
TechSee was founded in 2015 by CEO Eitan Cohen, COO Amir Yoffe, and Chief Scientist Gabby Sarusi. The company is based in Tel Aviv and has raised $54 million, to date. TechSee’s battle-tested platform has produced an impressive list of partnerships with market leaders like Vodafone, Orange, Liberty Global, Accenture, Hitachi, Lavazza, and more recently, Verizon, which provided its vast customer network with TechSee powered visual assistance. According to the company, the newly acquired funds will target new market expansion, as well as enhancing TechSee product development.
