The customer support industry is seeing an influx of startups like Sierra, Decagon, and Parloa that are bringing AI to automate customer calls, chats, and messages to help companies handle more queries at scale.
But implementing AI into every process is wasteful, says Omilia, an Athens-based company that has been automating voice calls and customer support since 2002. Dimitris Vassos, CEO of the company, said that the majority of customer support calls involve basic information such as account balances, and there is little need to deploy large language models for such tasks.
“We use every weapon available to us to win the customer service battle. Companies like Sierra, Decagon, and others identify themselves as generative AI companies. Their sole purpose is to deploy generative AI and limit themselves. They may have a bazooka, but when the enemy is nearby, they need a knife. This is the reality of contact centers where you need multiple tools,” he said.
Omilia itself has expanded into building self-learning agents that work at various customer touchpoints. To build it out, the company has now raised $67 million in Series B led by Expedition Growth Capital.
This round is the company’s second funding after raising $20 million from Grafton Capital in 2020. Since then, the company has managed to increase its annual recurring revenue tenfold to $60 million.
Omilia’s main differentiator is that it has superior unit economics for both itself and its customers, and because of this approach, it doesn’t require large capital injections compared to its competitors, Vasos said.
“Over the next few years, companies that can deliver real ROI will prevail. For now, I don’t care that we’re not as sexy on LinkedIn as Eleven Labs or Sierra. We’re interested in growing steadily and building the foundation for a company that will be worth $1 billion in revenue over the next three years,” Vasos said.
Omilia’s customers include Capital One, Discover, RBC, DWP and PSEG, and Vassos said quick-service restaurants with voice-based ordering are currently gaining a lot of traction. The company already has Taco Bell as a customer and has deployed its technology to more than 1,000 stores. Vassos said it is in talks with two more quick-service restaurants in the U.S.
However, AI implementation is quite hit or miss. In Taco Bell’s case, a glitch in the company’s ordering system reportedly caused customers to order 18,000 cups of water last year.
Vassos claims that this incident never happened and that Omilia’s logs did not show it. We reached out to Taco Bell for clarification. I’ll update the story if I get a response.
Omilia plans to use the new cash to open a new office in the United States, a market that accounts for a significant portion of the company’s revenue. The company also plans to strengthen its go-to-market team and hire a chief revenue officer, chief marketing officer and vice president of revenue operations.
The company currently has approximately 500 employees and is expected to reach 600 employees by the end of the year.
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