New funding from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Telcom Ventures, Schechter Private Wealth, Safar Partners, and Lions Capital will fuel innovations aimed at reducing employee and customer complexities and improving overall customer satisfaction
Cogito, the leader in real-time AI coaching and guidance for the enterprise, announced it has secured new funding to help advance features aimed at better supporting agents in the contact center and improving customer experiences. The funding round, including repeat commitments from two major investors, validates the importance of delivering strong employee and customer experiences in today’s turbulent economic climate. This significant investment demonstrates the impact potential of human-aware AI systems, and the belief that Cogito is best suited to deliver on their promise.
Despite the influx of new technology to further automate the customer experience (CX), contact center leaders face increasingly complex challenges and need creative, automated solutions to help solve them. Customer frustrations are heightened as self-service methods don’t effectively resolve their issues, requiring agents to have more in-depth knowledge into their brands’ solutions. This, in turn, places more responsibilities in agents’ hands, leading to a poor employee experience (EX) and increased attrition rates. With all of these factors intertwined, contact center leaders are seeking efficient ways to better service customers, while creating positive employee experiences and ensuring all KPIs and revenue goals are met.
“Delivering a strong CX has never been more important than in today’s competitive, uncertain economy – and forward-looking companies know that a strong CX starts with their own employees”
“Regardless of which end of the phone you sit on, contact center interactions are becoming increasingly convoluted, placing undue burdens on customers, agents, and contact center organizations as they seek new ways to alleviate frustrations and solve complex issues faster,” said Josh Feast, CEO and co-founder of Cogito. “Humans alone cannot solve these challenges, but human-aware AI systems have the potential to dramatically improve both employee and customer experiences. We’re elated that this new funding both validates our approach, and gives us the ammo we need to make deep investments in emotion and conversation AI – helping us take enterprise-grade CX and EX to the next level.”
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Fueled by this latest funding round, investments in generative AI and new innovations in emotion and conversation AI will help to solve unprecedented challenges, including:
- Address increased complexity of customer issues: Forrester’s latest CX Index revealed that customer satisfaction has declined for the second year in a row across all major industries. This speaks to the multifaceted challenges customers are facing, which are no longer effectively solved with self-service channels such as chatbots. To help resolve this, Cogito is delivering a revolutionary approach to quality assurance, leveraging real-time intelligence to ensure optimal customer experiences are consistently delivered.
- Manage higher expectations placed on call center agents: Not only are agents expected to know more to help solve more complex issues, they are also required to take on a sales role, effectively engaging customers in upsell and cross-sell opportunities to support revenue growth. Real-time AI coaching from Cogito arms agents with all the resources they need at their fingertips, giving them the tools and confidence they need to succeed.
- Reduce employee churn: In the past three years, employee attrition rates have jumped from 30% to 45% in the contact center, marking an all-time high. These turnover rates lead to significantly increased costs as contact center leaders are forced to allocate scarce resources to train and onboard new agents. To reduce attrition rates, Cogito is helping enterprises further improve EX with new intervention features to support agents in becoming more resilient.
“Delivering a strong CX has never been more important than in today’s competitive, uncertain economy – and forward-looking companies know that a strong CX starts with their own employees,” said Joe DiSabato, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. “Cogito’s expertise in AI solutions for contact centers positions them to capitalize on this exciting market opportunity for large enterprise companies to usher in a new era of CX- and EX-led business growth.”
To assist in successfully bringing these innovations to market, Cogito is investing in its own workforce with two new executive team appointments. Naomi Nuta has been named as Cogito’s Vice President of Marketing, while Mark Theall has been appointed as Cogito’s Vice President of Growth. Nuta will drive a holistic marketing strategy as Cogito continues to expand, and Theall will spearhead onboarding of new enterprise accounts while cultivating customer relationships.
