For enterprise homeowners, cellphone calls could be an unlimited time waster. Take the restaurant trade, for instance. Calls can result in extra necessary duties being ignored, like doing stock, balancing workers schedules, operating payroll and fixing tools points. The difficulty, exacerbated by the pandemic, is so extreme that eating places are increasingly abandoning their cellphone traces.
Alex Sambvani and Gabriel Duncan, who met whereas working at Spotify, got down to remedy the issue of overwhelming incoming calls utilizing AI, drawing on their backgrounds as information scientists. What emerged from their joint work is Slang.ai, a platform that routinely solutions the cellphone for eating places, retailers and different kinds of brick-and-mortar companies.
“Slang acts like a dependable staff member that provides correct responses and helps drive extra income, giving companies AI superpowers and empowering them to supply distinctive service to callers and streamline operations in a customized method,” Sambvani instructed TechCrunch through e mail.
In plainer, much less jargony and fluffy English, Slang acts as a form of digital cellphone concierge that solutions questions and takes — or modifies — reservations, together with OpenTable and Resy reservations through integrations. Utilizing Slang, callers can e book or modify reservations and even merely let a enterprise know that they’re operating late.
Picture Credit: Slang.ai
Companies can determine which calls Slang handles routinely versus fingers off to workers. Sambvani claims that Slang’s computerized speech recognition works for callers of all ages and understands totally different accents — a formidable feat if true, given computerized speech recognition tech’s traditionally poor dealing with of numerous dialects.
“Many brick-and-mortar companies are understaffed, inflicting them to overlook calls and ship potential clients to voicemail the place they lose out on potential income,” he continued. “Slang offers its shoppers entry to beforehand unknown information about why clients are calling … [And it] can floor trending explanation why clients are calling and will help operators proactively establish alternatives or points, corresponding to a location getting an irregular quantity of complaints relative to different areas.”
Slang isn’t the one startup promoting a imaginative and prescient of tech to chop down on pointless cellphone interactions. There’s Goodcall, which presents a free cloud-based, AI-powered conversational platform to handle incoming cellphone calls. Kea is constructing phone-answering AI particularly for eating places. So is ConverseNow, whose AI voice assistants take orders in fast service eating places through the cellphone, chat, drive-thru and self-service kiosks.
So what does Slang convey to the desk that units it aside? A big buyer base, primarily, Based on Sambvani, Slang has over 200 shoppers immediately, together with Slutty Vegan, Palm Home Hospitality Group, Studs, Planta, Hammitt and Nikki Seaside Miami. Income grew 6x in 2022.
Picture Credit: Slang.ai
That success led traders to pour $20 million into Slang — $8 million as part of a seed spherical and $12 million in a Sequence A. Homebrew led the latter with participation from Stage 2 Capital, Wing VC, Underscore VC, Energetic Capital and Collide Capital.
Sambvani says that the proceeds might be used to determine new partnerships and integrations within the restaurant, hospitality, retail and ecommerce industries, develop Slang’s go-to-market staff and broaden headcount from 18 workers to 40 by the top of the 12 months.