Estonian startup Klaus raises 1 7 million from Creandum for its customer support platform<\/h1>\n<\/p>\n

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HubSpot is launching a litany of AI-powered features for its sales and marketing platform to help small businesses compete against larger brands. Among the highlights are upgrades to its Service Hub aimed at managing customer conversations, addressing problem areas and driving retention, and new ways to generate content through the Content Hub, formerly CMS Hub. There is at least one other similar platform out there already. Fellow YC alum Papercups touts itself as an \u201copen core Intercom alternative,\u201d though its current focus seems to be on a live chat widget. Chatwoot is building an open source customer engagement platform to challenge some of the major players in the space, including multi-billion dollar publicly traded Zendesk; Salesforce\u2019s Service Cloud; Freshworks; and Intercom.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. The company has no plans, he said, to raise more money beyond the $239 million it\u2019s picked up so far from Kleiner Perkins, GV, Index and others that have backed it to date. There’s a new year upon us, with 2025 capping off a quarter-century of the modern Apple and its definitive role in personal computing innovation. In particular, 2025 marks 25 years of Apple’s intuitive experience that turns elements of hardware and software into a magical coherence.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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• This enables startups to tap into new customer segments and drive international growth.<\/li>\n
• \u201cIt was getting harder and harder, and we were within the category of tonnes of companies that were going public.<\/li>\n
• Ultimately, it boils down to lining up users\u2019 preferences with what\u2019s on offer.<\/li>\n
• It uses a multimodal large language model (LLM) to create artificial intelligence capable of answering highly complex questions.<\/li>\n
• But its API-first strategy is an interesting one, especially if you are a startup building a modern product with a lot of API endpoints.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  Megan Sheridan, who ran Intercom\u2019s world tours in 2016 and 2017 has rejoined the company from Web Summit to lead its events team. When you\u2019re focused like we are you can say something as simple as that, and the world gets it. We\u2019re seeing a lot of people leaving Zendesk for Intercom specifically for our AI stuff. But there\u2019s just such a giant pie that we can all be very successful.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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  The company argues this shouldn\u2019t be the way \u2014 it\u2019s more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to keep existing ones happy. HubSpot believes it has a solution that can be both proactive and reactive. In 2011, Eoghan McCabe was sitting in his friend\u2019s coffee shop when he came up with the idea for Intercom, an online platform that enables companies to deliver personalized responses to their customers. By offering an open source alternative to big-name proprietary incumbents, Chatwoot promises businesses of all sizes two major advantages.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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  • Less than a year later, McCabe asked his chief operating officer Karen Peacock, a respected industry veteran, if she wanted to take over as chief executive as he moved to chair.<\/li>\n
  • They all expect the new AI interface to be conversational, mobile-first, and lightning-fast to deploy and use.<\/li>\n
  • There\u2019s also a tool Pitre describes as Service Hub\u2019s \u201ckiller feature,\u201d a support agent.<\/li>\n
  • For now, though, the plan is to take on the task of bringing Intercom into a new phase of business, specifically to look for revenue and business beyond the chatbot that has made it famous and is in use by some 25,000 companies globally.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    This extra spend of $94 million will cover an increase in the group\u2019s machine-learning team headcount from 19 to 72 by the end of next year. \u201cThis will require an epic lift to make happen, but will dramatically increase our ability to ship great AI tech fast,\u201d he said. Mr McCabe told staff the targets would require more productivity from them, and that \u201cplans are in motion\u201d to address \u201cmediocrity\u201d in some aspects of the business.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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    It can deliver incredible experiences for consumers, and it represents the future. Year 2 is pick the head up and get out into the world,\u201d McCabe said. \u201cOur goal now is to revolutionise digital business with this human plus AI bot experience. Intercom he said was uniquely positioned between the might of Zendesk, and rising new startups seeking to disrupt the customer service space. Service Hub launched in 2018 as an all-in-one customer service solution powered by HubSpot\u2019s customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Now, it\u2019s receiving new tools infused with HubSpot AI to help keep customers happy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    Salesforce, McCabe himself pointed out, currently makes more money from customer support than from sales software. Second, Plain is highly customizable when it comes to integrating support actions in your product. It doesn\u2019t have to be a chat popup in the bottom-right corner of the website. Developers can customize the user interface and create new interactions, such as early access requests, product feedback features and native contact forms. McCabe has now been working with Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee and many of his senior team for more than ten years. \u201cYou don\u2019t usually get people as experienced as us all working back together in a startup,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Attention Sales Reps: AI is Coming For Your Job For Real. Estonian startup Klaus raises 1 7 million from Creandum for its customer support platform HubSpot is launching a litany of AI-powered features for its sales and marketing platform to help small businesses compete against larger brands. Among the highlights are upgrades to its Service Hub aimed at managing customer conversations, addressing problem areas and driving retention, and new ways to generate content through the Content Hub, formerly CMS Hub. There is at least one other similar platform out there already. Fellow YC alum Papercups touts itself as an \u201copen core Intercom alternative,\u201d though its current focus seems to be on a live chat widget. Chatwoot is building an open source customer engagement platform to challenge some of the major players in the space, including multi-billion dollar publicly traded Zendesk; Salesforce\u2019s Service Cloud; Freshworks; and Intercom. HubSpot unveils Zendesk-like updates to its Service Hub and other AI tools for SMBs – VentureBeat HubSpot unveils Zendesk-like updates to its Service Hub and other AI tools for SMBs. Posted: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source] It also integrates with a number of practice management platforms. \u201cThe stats speak for themselves, whether it\u2019s sales team performance, whether it\u2019s engineering performance, whether it\u2019s the rates at which we retain employees. Even though I\u2019ve applied so much pressure and so much change, applications for our roles are up 300 per cent, which is remarkable. Sam Altman has been described as \u201cthe Oppenheimer of our Age\u201d by New York Magazine. It makes calls to the backend to get relevant information, such as a subscription status, the name of the current plan, some usage metrics, etc. If you go back to an old ticket, Plain fetches live data once again. \u201cDarragh Curran, Paul Adams (chief product officer), and others could be outstanding founders themselves,\u201d McCabe said. Lauren Cullen, who joined Intercom from Twitter as one of its first people managers, is now head of HR. Chasing Zendesk \u201cIt was borderline arrogance, but there was great passion too for the history of technology.\u201d Companies like Apple, and 37signals, the creator of Basecamp, were inspirations. Before we get to the big bets, our conversation shifts to the early days of Intercom as McCabe tries to explain the culture he wanted Intercom to recapture, as well as his previous decision to step down as chief executive. It is now October 2023 and a year since McCabe returned as CEO of Intercom. The startup has been trying to make it as painless as possible to start using Plain. The company thinks getting started with Plain is as easy as building a Slackbot. Intercom, he said, had been working on its AI offering for five years before it decided to really go for it. Much of the $10 million over the planned budget has been spent building what Intercom believes is the best AI-driven customer service in the market. The EU wants to talk to US tech companies ahead of Germany\u2019s upcoming election Also, you can prepare ChatGPT to handle crisis situations and protect your brand\u2019s reputation. By training ChatGPT on potential crisis scenarios and appropriate response protocols, startups can ensure timely and consistent messaging during challenging times. This approach helps you to maintain customer trust, minimizes reputational damage, and enables quick resolution of crisis situations when they arise. Also, you can use ChatGPT to assist with A\/B testing and conversion rate optimization (CRO) efforts. ChatGPT can generate alternative versions of landing page copy, call-to-action messages, or email subject lines. This data-driven approach allows for continuous product improvement and eventually positions your startup for sustainable product-led growth. You can also leverage ChatGPT to create interactive and engaging online games or quizzes to gamify and optimise user engagement. By integrating ChatGPT into gamified experiences on a website or app, startups can increase user participation, collect valuable user data, and foster brand loyalty. This approach can also be used for viral marketing campaigns or creative lead-generation activities. Or there\u2019s Zendesk\u2019s, which is popular among companies that use Zendesk customer support, but which don\u2019t have open end-points to other ticketing systems or live chat services. ChatGPT can also be trained to analyze and extract insights from vast amounts of market research data and competitor information. By leveraging ChatGPT\u2019s natural language processing capabilities, startups can gain valuable insights into market trends, customer preferences, and competitor strategies. These insights can inform product development, marketing campaigns, and overall growth strategies. Yuno Energy CEO Cathal Fay: \u2018Starting from zero, \u20ac600m in revenues is not so bad\u2019 AI reps that know the product cold, and don\u2019t need help answering half your questions. AI reps that aren\u2019t distracted by second jobs and side hustles. AI reps that actually aren\u2019t bothered at all when sales is hard. And though HubSpot is embracing generative AI now, it still considers predictive AI valuable for different use cases. Pitre agrees that there are similarities between HubSpot\u2019s six Hubs (marketing, sales, service, content, operations and commerce) and Salesforce\u2019s individual Clouds. Service Hub is expanding beyond troubleshooting customer issues. For the first time, HubSpot is launching tools to drive customer retention. Now, businesses can be proactive in their outreach instead of exerting time and resources to keep customers. That will be a tall task \u2014 Zendesk is by no means the only company in the world of customer support. We\u2019re already getting to a point where every contact center wants to automate 50%+ of interactions with AI and automation. The group will add 22 staff across the rest of its research and development division. It will also add $13 million to its annual marketing spend, bringing it to a total of $37 million per year. \u201cAnd also to have context for the continued push on productivity and our talent bar that you will see from us over the next while. HubSpot\u2019s revamped Service Hub and Content Hub are available today. Both hubs feature a free tier, with paid plans starting at $15 per month per<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zendesk-vs-intercom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2474,"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaccounting1981.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}