What’s AI good for? Automating repetitive duties for the very busy individuals operating small companies, reckons Berlin-based startup Synthflow, which is saying a $7.4 million seed spherical for its SME-focused no code platform for AI voice help.
Since being based, round spring final 12 months, the startup has banked a complete of $9.1 million (together with this seed increase), which underscores ongoing investor enthusiasm for accelerating purposes of generative AI.
The startup additionally claims to be approaching 1,000 clients — touting “double-digit” month-to-month development charges because it stepped out of stealthy improvement to launch its browser-based “no code” instrument in December 2023. That means there’s a wholesome urge for food amongst SMEs to undertake — or at the very least experiment with — generative AI instruments that promise easy-to-reach productiveness positive aspects.
The brand new funding can be ploughed into R&D, in accordance with Synthflow CEO and co-founder Hakob Astabatsyan, who says the staff is eager to maintain stoking its early momentum by rising product utility and broadening the scope of SMEs it’s interesting to.
“We have very many ideas. We know exactly what the customers need. We’re going to work very hard on this to find elegant solutions,” he tells TechCrunch.
Astabatsyan, a serial entrepreneur with a enterprise background, is ex-Rocket Web. Becoming a member of him in his newest enterprise are his brother, Albert, who additionally labored with him on a previous no code startup; and Sassun Mirzakhan-Saky, who brings a software program engineering background and CTO experience to the staff.
Whereas Synthflow’s product kicked off with English-language name dealing with as a result of its largest markets are English-speaking, it has since added German and French language variations (observe: these are nonetheless in beta). So dialling up its deal with the latter markets in Europe can also be on the playing cards.
Finish-to-end expertise
Name facilities have been early adopters of AI voice brokers, pulling on massive language fashions’ (LLMs) APIs to energy techniques that would reply telephone calls in a human-like approach — simply with indefatigable vitality and enthusiasm 24/7, if not at all times flawless comprehension.
Synthflow is taking the idea in a barely completely different route, concentrating on service industry-focused SMEs straight, together with these in direction of the smaller finish of the class with a DIY “no code” providing. The purpose is to supply SMEs an “end-to-end” expertise, per Astabatsyan, who argues that the return on funding from with the ability to automate core duties like appointment scheduling can be instantly apparent to its goal resource-strapped companies.
“The AI can do it in a more affordable manner, more reliably, and humans can do other stuff,” is his concise pitch for voice help.
He offers the instance of a one-man-band handyman or mechanic who would usually reply the telephone themselves once they’re not engaged on a job — that means they inevitably find yourself lacking a variety of calls (and shedding out on some enterprise in consequence); or a dentist who employs a receptionist that works restricted hours so, once more, isn’t at all times round to select up the telephone.
Having a instrument that may deal with fundamental buyer enquiries may very well be a gamechanger for small companies, Astabatsyan argues.
Synthflow’s goal being SMEs essentially means a core focus for the startup is making AI expertise accessible to non-technical customers — which is why it’s constructed a no code interface for its clients to design voice brokers that match the wants of their companies.
“We wanted to try to build something simple,” he explains. “A no code layer on top [of AI agents] so that… business owners, business oriented people, can go and play around with this and get familiar and explore the what LLMs can do for their businesses.”
Synthflow’s interface lets clients drag and drop components to configure voice AIs that may carry out particular duties for them — resembling scheduling appointments; operating by way of FAQs; or performing “information extraction”, resembling acquiring private data from a possible buyer so a human can name them again.
“Let’s say if someone has to call, and there is a particular set of questions to be asked and particular pieces of information to be collected — especially static ones, such as, address, home, etc — AI is very good,” he argues.
The client can select to configure the AI assistant so it discloses it’s a robotic. “I think it is very good practice to disclose that it is a virtual assistant,” says Astabatsyan. “My personal favourite opening is: ‘Hello. My name is [so-and-so], right now, all our lines are busy. I apologise for that. I am the virtual assistant here at [the name of the business]. How can I help you?’.”
One other massive utility for voice AIs is recognizing when a name must be transferred to a human agent, in accordance with Astabatsyan. So, basically, utilizing AI to filter inbound calls based mostly on complexity — with automation caring for the straightforward requests which then compounds the profit by liberating up human brokers to have extra time to spend on extra advanced buyer enquiries.
He stresses the purpose isn’t to interchange human (or human-facing) jobs however fairly suggests AI will help SMEs be extra productive and environment friendly than they might in any other case be with their restricted assets.
Because of this, in addition to letting clients deploy voice brokers, Synthflow’s system is designed to deal with post-call knowledge entry duties too — including appointments to a calendar instrument for example. Constructing out integrations with third-party software program is thus one other massive focus for the staff.
“This is what the AI is so good at,” he argues. “Because it can take this information [extracted from a call] and, let’s say, update particular fields in particular CRM — and if you do these things at scale, on hundreds or 1,000s of calls, suddenly we’re seeing this technology advantage that we saw [when businesses first adopted] computers.”
For the voice brokers, the startup is constructing on OpenAI’s GPT LLM but in addition incorporating its personal AI fashions on prime — which Astabatsyan says have been educated by itself knowledge and fine-tuned to particular buyer use-cases.
He says it has additionally constructed its personal “voice orchestration layer” which converts the client’s speech into textual content that may then be fed to the AI mannequin as a immediate, returning an automatic reply that the system converts from textual content into speech the client hears as a synthesized voice on the opposite finish of the telephone line.
For now Synthflow is concentrated on utilizing AI with inbound calls — which Astabatsyan suggests are the low hanging fruit for automation for resource-strapped companies. However he hints at extra subtle capabilities in improvement, with R&D fuelled by the chunky seed spherical.
One factor he mentions they’re engaged on is a characteristic that may allow Synthflow’s voice AIs to carry out what he refers to as “live actions” or “connections” — that means that in a name the AI would have the ability to run a examine on reside stock in a warehouse. Or pull in one other different piece of requested information and “push it elsewhere”, as he places it.
He additionally sketches a state of affairs the place task-focused AI voice techniques would have the ability to increase their utility collectively. They may hand off a name to different devoted voice AIs educated for various duties being requested by the client.
“The key here is to have focus on who your customers are. Because, depending for whom you are building this, your product is going to be very, very, very different,” he provides.
One impression to contemplate is, if voice AIs and voice help techniques reside as much as the productiveness hype — slickly delivering on the promise of effectively dealing with a complete layer of buyer enquiries, together with by expertly redirecting extra advanced stuff to the fitting system or human to cope with — it might find yourself that means the typical SME discovers they’ve an terrible lot extra work than they’re in a position to tackle.
“I think that’s an interesting question for a lot of managers and leaders to think about, right?” he responds, discussing this state of affairs. “Like, if there’s so much capacity — and productivity gets unleashed — how do we channel this human resources in other sectors of the economy? Because I think this question is not answered yet, but it’s a very interesting question indeed.”
Synthflow’s seed funding is led by Singular, with participation from present investor Atlantic Labs and quite a few traders within the AI house, together with the founders of Krisp AI.
