Investment of the month: Engaige's AI solution brings efficiency to customer services
"We make the process more joyful for consumers, and more cost-efficient for companies," says Tijmen van den Elzen, co-founder and CEO of Engaige, which recently raised €1 million.
Published on October 7, 2024
Contacting companies' customer services can be quite frustrating. Long waiting times, slow responses, and inefficient solutions can negatively impact customers' experience. Lately, many businesses have opted for automated chats, but a lack of good implementation and rigid software-based solutions led to more dissatisfaction for both companies and consumers.
Engaige's AI-powered platform is a solution that enhances customers' experience while reducing operational costs. By offering a safe and reliable system, the Dutch start-up helps companies automate their communication channels more efficiently, allowing the creation of personalized AI customer service agents. A key aspect of Engaige's platform is the commitment to ensuring a high degree of accuracy and empathy in customer interactions.
Recently, the Rotterdam-based start-up raised €1 million in seed funding to expand its team and improve its product. The funding comes from Graduate Entrepreneur Fund, a leading investor in the AI and customer service sector, along with Mamadoo Ventures, Keadyn, and other angel investors. IO spoke with Tijmen van den Elzen, co-founder and CEO of Engaige, about the company’s technology and prospects.
What makes your platform so innovative?
"Our approach combines tailored implementation with the customer to ensure that the AI agent’s communication and behavior align with the company’s policies. At the same time, the native architecture we use leverages the reasoning capabilities of advanced large language models, enabling the AI to engage in natural, human-like conversations that are helpful and adaptive, rather than rigid and programmatic."
How does your technology increase businesses' efficiency?
"Our technology allows companies to scale their customer service without sacrificing quality, acting as a flexible layer on top of existing support teams. It’s multilingual, fully customizable to fit businesses' needs, and available 24/7. Our AI customer service agents speak every language and are always available, so we can have large cost reductions while increasing customer happiness."
How does your AI solution work?
"We can completely tailor it to the use case of our customers. We do that by connecting to their internal systems, so we can take action in those systems, and help customers in an effective way. Further, companies can define their policies on when the AI should be doing something or when it shouldn't be doing something. So our customers can customize their AI agents based on their particular needs."
How is this funding helping you?
"It helps us tremendously in helping businesses to provide great customer support. We are scaling up our teams to build an even better product and make it more scalable. An essential part of our platform is that we give control and observability to our customers about what and why our AI is responding in a certain way. In the upcoming period, we will be investing a lot in our product while focusing on national and international growth."
What goals do you have for the future?
"For us, it's completely clear that the entire industry is heading in this direction. We see that companies that are not adopting this technology will not be competitive with their peers. It's amazing to see we can make such a big change in customer experience. We can make the process much more joyful for consumers, but also much more cost-efficient for companies that we work with. That really motivates us to keep going and scale our product."