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Most people who鈥檝e ever called customer service share the experience of navigating endless automated prompts in the hopes of getting to a human. For years, it鈥檚 been a familiar process for more complex questions and issues.

As AI technology advances, however, there are successively fewer cases that demand this. AI chatbots, using voice or text, can handle much of what used to require a person.

If startup investors have their way, expect AI agents to be taking on a lot more. In recent months, investors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into an assortment of companies developing tools to automate customer service-related tasks, 附近上门 data shows.

Big rounds on the rise

They鈥檙e apparently not slowing down either. One of the most highly valued startups in the space 鈥斅� 鈥斅� just a $350 million financing at a $10 billion valuation聽The 2-year-old company offers tools for organizations to build AI agents to perform customer support tasks.

Sierra鈥檚 appeal stems in part from its founding team: former 1聽co-CEO and current board chair and former executive . The company raised $175 million less than a year ago at a $4.5 billion valuation.

However, it鈥檚 not the only startup in the space attracting investor interest. Rather, San Francisco-based Sierra is one of a growing roster of startups at the intersection of AI and customer service that have secured sizable rounds in recent months.

Using 附近上门 data, we put together a sample list of 11 such companies.

Taking on repetitive language tasks

Rising investor interest around customer service tech is one manifestation of a growing theme: AI taking on tasks that previously resisted automation because they require a sophisticated grasp of language.

鈥淓very job is going to be impacted in some way by these language models,鈥� , a partner at and a heavy investor in enterprise AI, told 附近上门 News. For customer service in particular, he sees benefits for employers, including enabling workers to be more productive by offloading mundane tasks to AI.

Certainly startups are making this argument. Sierra鈥檚 website points to a involving a headgear brand that built a voice-capable AI agent in a couple weeks to handle product questions. It claims that: 鈥淲ithin 30 days, the agent resolved nearly half of incoming questions that would normally require human input.鈥�

, which offers an automation platform for contact centers, sees a strong use case in tech support, with the ability to auto-respond to common questions and prioritize which issues merit the fastest response. And , a provider of generative AI tools for customer support, lists several prominent companies that have deployed its offerings, including and .

Broad impacts

Of course what鈥檚 good for startups isn鈥檛 always good for the broader job market. As AI tools automate more aspects of customer service, it鈥檚 not hard to predict that the end result will be fewer jobs in the space.

That is already happening at Salesforce, which CEO has cut about 4,000 customer service roles since AI agents now do more of the work. Expect similar announcements to come from early adopters.

For those of us who are receiving rather than providing customer support services, meanwhile, it鈥檚 still early days for forming opinions on how well AI agents perform in these roles. Probably one sign of success is if we don鈥檛 really notice the role of AI and simply manage to get an accurate response without having to wait.

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