There’s a new artificial intelligence company in town.
Nashville-based Ducky, an AI-powered customer support platform, raised $2.7 million in pre-seed funding led by Penny Jar Capital with participation from Bread & Butter Ventures, NOMO Ventures, Wilson Sonisini, angel investors and others, according to a press release.
“There is a rush to use AI to deflect customers and prevent human interaction – we believe AI is more powerful when supporting humans, not replacing them,” said James O’Brien, co-founder and chief operating officer of Ducky in the release. “By removing the blocker of finding the right information and handling repetitive questions, agents can focus on the aspects of their work that create impactful, lasting customer relationships.”
The use of artificial intelligence has boomed across the business world over the past year and a half. As time goes on, more companies are looking to use AI to grow their business, and many tech startups, like Ducky, are using AI as the very basis for what they do.
Ducky uses machine learning and AI to deliver information to customer-facing teams with the goal of helping those teams increase productivity, according to the release. As the company comes out of stealth mode, initial clients include customer-focused companies like San Francisco-based Superhuman.
“The information support agents need to do their jobs is buried in a myriad of distinct places, and the effort to search and discover is an emotionally draining, time-sucking experience – not an ideal environment for the team who is a gateway to your customers,” said Hongbo Tian, co-founder and CEO of Ducky, in the release. “We believe the best way to create an incredible experience for customers is to put AI and machine learning to work for – and learn from – the incredible support agents on the frontlines.”
Ducky uses a combination of open-source AI and proprietary technology to learn from internal knowledge tools like Slack, Notion and JIRA, according to the release. With that knowledge, it helps support agents respond to tickets faster by finding the correct information in seconds. The platform will create a customer response based on the brand’s tone.
Ducky has a Chrome extension that allows it to work alongside any support ticketing platform including Help Scout, Zendesk, Hubspot and Gorgias.
“Knowledge workers spend about one day a week searching for data – this is disastrous when the customer experience hangs in the balance,” said Rich Scudellari, co-founder of Penny Jar Capital, in the release. “The Ducky team is solving this data problem with machine learning and AI, freeing up time for support teams to create personalized customer experiences with lasting impact.”
