SA国际传媒

, a Canadian developer of an automated customer experience (ACX) platform, has raised $44 million in a Series B round led by .

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Existing backers , , , and also put money in the round. The Toronto, Ontario-based company has now raised a total of just over $60 million since its 2014 inception, according to SA国际传媒 data. This latest financing is more than triple the amount raised in its , led by New York-based FirstMark, in December 2018, according to SA国际传媒.

The company declined to disclose the valuation at which the Series B was raised.

Ada, a SaaS operator, has built an AI chatbot onto its ACX platform with the goal of helping companies such as , , and save money and improve customer satisfaction. It currently has more than 100 customers.

I hopped on the phone with CEO and co-founder to get a better understanding of what the company does.

鈥淲e鈥檙e on a mission to strengthen customer relationships through an incredibly easy-to-use automation platform,鈥� he said. 鈥淣on-technical teams use a Lego-like block building experience to build a chatbot that automates upwards of 80 percent of all customer conversations.鈥�

Ada can train its chatbot to understand and address topics specific to each business while getting up and running in weeks. A proprietary Natural Language Understanding engine helps the chatbot to understand meaning and context without perfectly constructed sentences, 鈥渁llowing it to navigate around jargon, typos, spelling errors and more than 100 different languages,鈥� according to the company.

The Ada advantage

The benefits of using Ada, Murchison said, include a dramatic reduction in customer service wait times. For example, one customer, AirAsia (with more than 100 million passengers) said the use of Ada cut down its wait time from one hour to less than 60 seconds.

It also increases customer satisfaction for an increase of 50 to 60 percent in rates in some cases, according to Murchison. Plus, it allows 鈥渁 perfect memory of clients.鈥�

鈥淲henever you talk to an Ada-powered bot, it always remembers who you are,鈥� he told SA国际传媒 News. 鈥淎nd then it鈥檚 always improving based on the conversation you had.鈥�

Additionally, it can automate the purchase of software for SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies.

鈥淲e鈥檙e turning what used to be a customer service cost center into a revenue generator,鈥� Murchison said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e built an operating system for the customer experience.鈥�

The company claims it helps automate over tens of millions conversations annually, and has: reduced customer wait time up to 98 percent; solved more than 70 percent of customer inquiries 鈥渋nstantly鈥�; and achieved customer satisfaction scores of 90 percent.

Growth

While Ada is not yet profitable, it鈥檚 been seeing ARR (annual recurring revenue) growth. According to Murchison, ARR tripled in 2018 and 2019, and he expects it to triple again this year.

The company has 150 employees, 100 of whom were hired over the past year, and its new capital will go toward deepening the sophistication of Ada鈥檚 technology.

鈥淲e doubled our average automation rate last year, and we have a long roadmap of new ML features we鈥檙e going to accelerate the growth of with this new round,鈥� Murchison told me. 鈥淲e also want to expand our capabilities so we can support greater diversity and use cases, and types of customers.鈥�

Ada also plans to use its new funds to 鈥済o more global.鈥� Currently, 30 percent of its business is outside North America.

鈥淚 think it will be a lot more than that in the next couple of years,鈥� Murchison said.

Investor POV

础肠肠别濒鈥檚 said his firm was impressed with the origin of Ada. The co-founders, Murchison and , actually created the product to solve a pain point around scaling customer support they were facing at another company.

鈥淭hey pivoted the business to solve the problem,鈥� Fletcher said. 鈥淎nd they have done it in such a way that gives customer service reps as well as business users and owners an opportunity to make their own tweaks–even if they are not technical. That not needing to have access to a development team is empowering.鈥�

Accel invested in another Toronto-based SaaS company, , last year. In that case, Accel wrote its largest initial check ever, leading a $200 million round for the company in its first external funding in its 14-year history.

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