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COALA - Cloud-based AI-driven and Language-agnostic Customer Support Assistant

Project description

Efficient Customer Service with a Human Touch

In a world where customers expect 24/7 care, the quality and availability of customer support services can make or break any business, especially in the service industry. Providing excellent service is no easy task and Customer Service organizations are tremendously inefficient. Support agents spend up to 20% of their time searching for information to assist customers or writing the same thing over and over. The EU-funded COALA project is developing an AI-based customer support assistant for agents to help them eliminate manual tasks. This technology is able to understand conversations and automate repetitive tasks, being not only an assistant for the agents but also a way for customers to easily find information. The solution increases agent productivity up to 20% and reduces agent turnover by 22%.

Objective

Customer support industry is suffering from huge inefficiencies, as agents spend 20% of their time looking for information manually, in order to answer to customers. That translates into a cost of €10,400 per support agent annually. For a small company with a support team of 5 people, this adds up to €52,000 annually. In addition to manual search, there are some AI-powered technologies available, but they have several disadvantages. E.g. ticket deflection-based solutions redirect consumers to “help articles” where they can read about possible solution. The drawback of this technology is that it can handle only very simple questions and is not suitable for complex inquiries, therefore often resulting in decreasing customer satisfaction. Template-based solutions require manual creation and regular update of the templates which makes this technology less effective and time-consuming, taking at least 10% of the agents’ time. To solve these problems, Cleverly is developing a language-agnostic AI-based customer support assistant – Coala. This software is based on proprietary Knowledge Powered and General Understanding Technology that can understand conversations, automating repetitive tasks and personalizing user interactions. The main differentiator between us and the competitors is that we are building a generic recommendation model that is scalable across wide range of industries, small and big customer support teams. This has never been done by any other company. Coala provides 20-30% of cost savings annually, at the same time lowering agent turnover by 22%. The global customer experience management market size is expected to reach €29B by 2025 progressing at a CAGR of 22.9%, providing lucrative growth opportunities for Cleverly. Cleverly team is run by a team of serial entrepreneurs with previous startup building and scaling experience globally. The impact of the proposed project is profound: by 2025 we expect to employ 94 people and achieve a project ROI of 26.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

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Coordinator

CLEVERLY, LDA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 518 927,38
Address
CALCADA DO LAVRA, 22, 2
1150-208 Lisboa
Portugal

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Continente Área Metropolitana de Lisboa Área Metropolitana de Lisboa
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 169 896,25
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