Solidroad just raised $6.5M to reinvent customer service with AI that coaches, not replaces

PermanentA startup of artificial intelligence that promises to solve one of the most persistent problems of customer service has collected $ 6.5 million in seed financing to expand its platform that automatically trains customer service and AI agents.

The Dublin-Foundated company, led by First round capital with participation of Y Combinatora fundamental challenge for growing companies: how you can maintain high -quality customer experiences and at the same time control the costs, while discussion volumes explode after 10,000 interactions per month.

“CX leaders who are scaled after 10,000 conversations per month are often stuck between two options: they retain quality and eat the costs, or lower costs and see how customer satisfaction suffers,” said Mark Hughes, co-founder and CEO of Solidroad, in an exclusive interview with Venturebeat. “None of the traditional solutions works.”

The financing round, which brings the total capital from Solidroad to $ 8 million, is increasingly difficult to balance the quality of the customer experience with operational efficiency. Traditional approaches – offshore outsourcing, older quality assurance tools or fully automated AI agents – according to Hughes often result in deteriorating customer satisfaction scores.

How AI analyzes every customer conversation to make personalized training simulations

The Solidroad platform works as what Hughes calls ‘an aggregation layer’ that is on top of existing customer communication channels and analyzes any interaction between companies and their customers. In contrast to AI solutions that try to completely replace human agents, Solidroad focuses on making both human representatives and AI systems more effective.

The platform automatically assesses 100% of customer conversations through multiple channels, which applies AI-driven quality assurance that traditionally required only 1-3% of the interactions. More critical, it transforms these insights into usable improvements through individualized training simulations for human agents and recommendations for refinements for AI systems.

“Traditional QA has always been manual and retrospective,” Hughes explained. “Someone assesses a handful of phone calls or e -mails, applies a section and tells you how you did it. We had to fully reconsider that approach. It was not enough to just score conversations with AI – we wanted to make the insights usable.”

The system generates personalized training scenarios based on actual discussion patterns and identified skills, so that what Hughes describes as targeted coaching on a scale without adding process acquisition or extra employees.

Early customer results suggest that the approach provides measurable improvements. Crypto.comThe cryptocurrency exchange, used Solidroad to reduce the average handling time by 18%, while at the same time the scores of customer satisfaction from 87% to 90% improve-an increase in 3 percentage point that means a significant improvement in the customer service industry.

Marketing automation platform Activecampaign Reported the saving of the equivalent of a full year of manual coaching time, which the company has re -invested in training initiatives with higher leverage and faster feedback mechanisms. Customer involvement platform Stage Lower new rental slope in two by bedding the AI ​​simulations of Solidroad in their onboarding process.

“Solidroad customers see 90% or higher Go-Live CSAT scores, faster slope times and a huge reduction in manual QA work,” Hughes said, with reference to extra results Partnerherowho saw an improvement of 30% in the scores of agent skills.

The platform currently analyzes hundreds of thousands of conversations monthly for more than 50 customers, with new companies registering every week, according to the company.

Hughes and co-founder Patrick Finlay, who acts as Chief Technology Officer, developed their understanding of challenges in the field of customer experience during their term of office at Intercom, the customer reports platform where they first met and worked together.

“Patrick was in building functions; I sold them,” Hughes recalled. “We saw first-hand how important the customer experience is for growth, but also how frustrating it was to work with tools that CX teams did not really help to do their work better. Great companies were regular duct taping solutions that were not built for them.”

The duo represents a growing trend of second-time founders who apply artificial intelligence to operational challenges for companies. Hughes has previously established and sold Gradguide, a career guidance platform, while Finlay was co-founder Monaru.

Why Solidroad chose human augmentation above the AI ​​replacement trend that wipe customer service

The market for customer experience software market has exploded because companies recognize the turnover impact of customer satisfaction, but many existing solutions focus on complete automation or basic analyzes instead of systematic improvement of human performance.

Traditional quality assurance tools usually require significant manual supervision and offer retrospective insights instead of proactive training. In the meantime, fully automated AI agents are struggling, although promising cost savings, often struggling with complex or emotionally nuanced customer interactions, which supplies some Hughes as “hallucinations” instead of useful reactions.

“In contrast to other AI-driven CX solutions, we do not go to conversations ourselves,” Hughes explained. “Most AI CX tools try to replace people with AI agents. We help them improve.”

This positioning reflects a broader debate in the industry about the optimum balance between human agents and artificial intelligence in customer service activities.

The bet of the first round indicates trust in collaboration between people and AI on full automation

The main investment of the first round Capital is a considerable validation of the approach to Solidroad. The Venture company previously led early rounds for companies, including Concept” UberAnd other category-definating platforms, which suggests that trust in the potential of Solidroad to reform customer experience technology.

“We are pleased to work with the first round, the first institutional investor in companies such as Notion, Uber and much more,” Hughes noted in the company’s announcement. “But even more important, they have supported founders who know how to build.”

The financing will mainly support aggressive recruitment, in particular in San Francisco, where the company sets up its primary hub. Solidroad is planning to move its team-based team to the Bay Area and at the same time expanding on engineering and go-to-market functions.

“We are currently aimed at hiring engineering and go-to-market roles,” said Hughes. “We are looking for people who want to be at the border of AI and customer experience.”

Enterprise security measures are on growing concerns about AI that analyzes sensitive conversations

As Solidroad analyzes sensitive customer conversations, the company has implemented security measures for business quality, including SOC 2 Type 2 And ISO27001 Compliance. Customer data remains insulated in secure workplaces without cross-client sections, in which privacy problems are tackled that have become increasingly important as companies take AI-driven tools.

“Security and privacy are the core of how we work,” Hughes emphasized. “The data of every customer lives in a safe, insulated workspace. Nothing is ever shared between customers.”

What Solidroad’s success reveals about the future of AI adoption in the workplace

The approach to Solidroad reflects broader trends in the acceptance of artificial intelligence, whereby companies are increasingly looking for augmentation instead of replacing human capacities. Instead of pursuing complete automation, the platform makes possible what Hughes describes as “the right balance of people and AI.”

“We believe that AI should handle it repetitive, transactional work and people have to ensure complex, emotional and nuanced interactions,” Hughes said. “Solidroad helps companies understand where that line is and then helps to improve both sides.”

This philosophy corresponds to emerging Enterprise AI strategies that emphasize cooperation between people and instead of replacing wholesalers of employees.

The larger whole: why continuous improvement matters more than perfect automation

The rapid growth and substantial financing round of Solidroad alleviates a critical shift in how companies approach artificial intelligence – a shift that prioritizes systematic improvement over revolutionary replacement. Although much of the AI ​​discourse focuses on dramatic automation that completely eliminates human roles, the success of Solidroad suggests that companies can find greater value in technologies that make their existing workforce measurably better.

The timing is particularly important. Since the first excitement on completely autonomous AI agents encounters the messy reality of customer service-where empathy, context and nuanced problem solution clearly remain human strengths-discovering companies that are the most valuable AI applications that can improve instead of eliminating the human possibilities.

Hughes’ vision to make ‘every customer interaction’ a learning opportunity, represents something in -depth than process optimization. It suggests a future in which artificial intelligence serves as a continuous feedback loop, which constantly increases the basis of human performance instead of replacing it. This approach could be more sustainable and ultimately more transforming than the binary choice between people or AI who has dominated a lot of discourse for business technology.

In an era in which customer experience is increasingly determined business success, the companies that find out how they can systematically improve instead of easy automating that they have built something much more valuable than a cost-saving tool has created a competitive advantage that connects over time.