Conversica’s Market Momentum Continues in 2018 with Rapid Growth and New AI Capabilities
FOSTER CITY, Calif. (PRWEB) October 30, 2018 -- Conversica, the leader in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) for business, today announced the achievement of several key milestones in 2018, including significant growth in customer count and recurring revenue, the acquisition and integration of Intelligens, development of enhancements to the company’s AI technology, and the closing of a new round of funding.
Conversica created and defined the conversational AI category with autonomous AI Assistants that engage in human-like conversations and take appropriate actions to solve important business problems.
A few key milestones for Conversica in 2018 include:
- Continuing aggressive growth of annual recurring revenue, now exceeding $35 million, with sales to new customers and significant expansions in existing accounts.
- Growing the customer base across a number of industries, including firms in the technology, financial services, education, sports, hospitality, and automotive sectors. Notable new customers in 2018 include Cloudera, Epicor, Gainsight, the New York Mets, Jitterbit, LeasePlan, Sutter Physician Services, Textron, and the Orlando Magic.
- Releasing new AI Assistants, new assistant skills and new third-party integrations with Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Sales and Marketing clouds, HubSpot, and CDK.
- Expanding internationally with new offices and employees in the UK and Latin America, as well as delivering platform and security enhancements to support our compliance efforts with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- Introducing an AI Admissions Assistant, the first conversational assistant designed specifically for higher education institutions seeking to improve their engagement with prospective students to drive higher enrollment.
- Expanding the company’s intellectual property portfolio with a new patent granted for AI-powered systems that automatically carry on conversations, including tools to build those conversations and train the AI to execute them.
- Completing the Intelligens acquisition with the addition of customers in South America, over 200 Spanish conversation types, and new technical integrations and communication channels.
- Receiving multiple technology and business awards and recognition in notable lists, including the CB Insights AI 100, the Inc. 5000, Silicon Valley Fast 50, and San Francisco Business Times Fast 100 lists of fastest growing private companies.
- Increasing international presence on three continents and the number of employees, with important new additions in data science, engineering, customer success, and sales to support the company’s continuing growth.
“Conversica’s ongoing momentum speaks to the power of using conversational AI to automate routine but important business conversations that lead to real business results,” observed CEO Alex Terry. “Conversica created the conversational AI category and continues to lead the industry in terms of technology innovation, customer acquisition and revenue. In addition to growing the market for our flagship sales and marketing solutions, we are also investing in our larger vision of automating important conversations and processes across the enterprise to create a better customer experience, free employees for more valuable work, and deliver on the promise of AI Assistants and humans working harmoniously and efficiently together.”
Driving Product Innovation in Conversational AI
Conversica deployed important technical capabilities in 2018, including enhancements to interoperability, customer conversations, platform administration, and security and data privacy. The company delivered new integrations with popular CRM, marketing automation, and dealer management systems, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, HubSpot Sales Hub and CRM, CDK and AutoAlert, to further enrich conversations between Conversica AI Assistants and humans. The AI Assistant conversation library was also expanded with hundreds of new conversations across multiple assistant skill categories, as well as new support for German, Portuguese and Japanese languages.
Creating Specialized AI Assistants
This year Conversica added the industry’s first AI-powered Admissions Assistant for higher education to the company’s portfolio of virtual assistants powered by conversational AI.
Contacting prospective students to boost enrollment, the new assistant enables busy admissions teams to engage prospective students in a personal yet automated way, at scale. Another addition to the Conversica virtual assistant portfolio, the AI Customer Success Assistant which focuses on boosting customer retention and revenue expansion, will be launched next month.
Security and Data Privacy Enhancements
Conversica also extended its support for the EU’s GDPR in 2018. Conversica created services and processes designed to help customers who are data controllers under GDPR to achieve compliance by protecting end user data and personal information. Conversica’s expansive and thorough GDPR program shows its serious commitment to supporting companies which are serving persons residing in the EU. More information on Conversica and the GDPR can be found here and here.
Strategic Acquisition of Intelligens
2018 also saw Conversica’s acquisition of Intelligens, a Santiago-based provider of conversational AI for sales and marketing focused on the Latin American market. Founded in 2016, Intelligens served dozens of customers in Chile, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. The Intelligens acquisition brings new integrations and a rich repository of AI conversations in Spanish, adding to Conversica’s already extensive machine learning data set. Conversica has integrated Intelligens’ technology, conversations and data set into the company’s conversational AI platform, allowing Conversica customers to leverage new capabilities, as well as a larger training data set and increased AI accuracy when seeking to reach the 400 million+ Spanish speakers in the world.
Multiple Awards and Honors
Conversica was recognized numerous times in 2018. The company earned a “Best Application of AI for Sales and Marketing” Alconics award and was named to the CB Insights AI 100. Conversica also earned a Digiday Technology Award for best sales automation platform. Finally, Conversica was named the 10th fastest growing company on the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “Fastest Growing Private Companies in Silicon Valley” list and was again recognized with an improved position in the San Francisco Business Times Fast 100 list. The company also continued its move up the Inc. 5000 for the third year in a row, while Conversica CEO Alex Terry was named a Top 50 SaaS CEO of 2018.
About Conversica
Conversica is the leader in conversational AI for business and the only provider of AI-driven lead engagement software for marketing and sales organizations. The flagship Conversica® AI Sales Assistant helps companies find and secure customers more quickly and efficiently by automatically contacting, engaging, qualifying and following up with leads via natural, two-way conversations. Used by more than 1,000 companies worldwide, Conversica’s sales assistants are built on a proven and patented AI platform integrating natural language processing (NLP), natural language generation (NLG), and machine learning (ML) capabilities and engage prospects over multiple communication channels and in multiple languages. Recognized by Gartner as a Cool Vendor, Conversica is a portfolio company of Providence Equity, Kennet Partners and Toba Capital and is headquartered in Foster City, Calif.
To learn more, visit conversica.com and follow the company on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Sara Black, Bospar, 213-618-1501, [email protected]
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