It’s a pain we all know – the dreaded customer support call. It starts innocently enough: “Please listen closely as our menu options have changed.”
What comes next, however, is an experience from another century. The endless menu of irrelevant options, the looping hold music, the automated voice that never quite understands you (“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”) – all leading to the inevitable conclusion: “AGENT, REPRESENTATIVE, AGENT, REPRESENTATIVE!”
Contact centers play an increasingly important role in a world of ever rising customer expectations. But they’re long overdue for an upgrade.
That’s why our team at WiL (World Innovation Lab) is excited to announce today that we’re leading Cresta’s Series D funding round and joining the company’s Board of Directors.
The Contact Center: A Critical But Outdated Customer Experience Hub
Contact centers are a critical channel through which businesses interact with their customers. The global contact center market represents approximately $450 billion in annual spend - the vast majority of which is driven by human labor costs (Source). However, despite these significant investments, the technology and systems that power contact centers remain stubbornly stuck in the past. Even today, a significant portion of contact center software remains on-premises, primarily due to privacy and security requirements, regulatory concerns, existing investments in legacy solutions, and organizational inertia.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that millions of frontline agents, who have the ability to build lasting customer loyalty, currently lack the resources, tools, and real-time insights needed to deliver high quality customer service. As a result, contact centers are too often plagued by high employee turnover, inefficient operations, and low customer satisfaction, leaving customers confused, frustrated, and in search of alternative solutions.
However, with the rise of conversational AI, we believe that contact centers – defined by high volume repetitive processes and manual workflows – represent an ideal opportunity for AI to make an immediate and transformative impact.
Cresta: Bringing Intelligence to the Contact Center
Since its founding in 2017, Cresta has been redefining what’s possible for AI in the world’s largest and most complex contact centers.
Today, Cresta has established itself as the new standard for modern, intelligent contact centers. Their platform is trusted by major enterprises across several critical industries, including financial services, telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and retail. Companies such as United Airlines, Cox Communications, Porsche, and Holiday Inn are all using Cresta at enterprise-scale to better serve their own end customers.
Cresta’s comprehensive platform delivers value to all stakeholders within a contact center. For frontline agents, the platform provides powerful workflow automation tools, automated AI-driven coaching, and precise real-time actions for navigating complex customer conversations. For managers and business leaders, the platform delivers differentiated insights, robust analytics, and proactive recommendations for continuous improvement. In addition, the company continues to execute on an ambitious product roadmap, including their recent launch of a fully automated Virtual Agent.
Cresta’s solutions deliver significant ROI and rapid time to value. For example, unlike traditional legacy solutions, Cresta’s platform is designed as an open ecosystem that seamlessly integrates with both modern and legacy systems, allowing for faster deployment and for customers to maintain their legacy infrastructure. As a result, Cresta serves to not only augment and enhance the performance of the people within a contact center, but also the underlying systems as well. Once implemented, Cresta enables businesses to deliver better customer experiences, achieve productivity gains, and drive improved business performance.
Looking forward, we believe that Cresta is well positioned to continue to define the future of intelligent contact centers. The company has a unique combination of an ambitious vision, a massive market, a proven enterprise-grade platform, and a talented and experienced team, led by CEO Ping Wu, who spent more than a decade building contact center AI products at Google prior to joining Cresta.
Led by our Chief Investment Officer Rob Theis – a multi-decade veteran in customer support software – we've been strategically evaluating this space for years. After engaging extensively with the Cresta team, we are convinced their innovative approach, solid execution and most importantly deploying artificial intelligence capabilities into customer production make them the ideal partner to lead the next wave of AI-powered customer experience solutions.
We’re proud to partner with Cresta and incredibly excited about what comes next!
This material does not constitute an offer, solicitation or recommendation to sell or an offer to buy any securities, investment products or investment advisory services. Any offer or solicitation will be made only pursuant to a confidential private placement memorandum and subscription documents (the “Offering Materials”) and will be subject to the terms and conditions contained in such Offering Materials.
Any reference to a specific company or security does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell, hold or directly invest in the company or its securities. It should not be assumed that the recommendations made in the future will be profitable or will equal the performance of the securities discussed in this document.
Certain information contained herein constitutes “forward-looking statements” which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “target,” “intend,” “continue,” or “believe,” or the negatives thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. Due to various risks and uncertainties, actual events or results or the actual performance of any entity or transaction may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in such forward-looking statements. The information contained herein is believed to be reliable but no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, is given as to the accuracy or completeness of such information by WiL, its directors, partners or employees and no liability is accepted by such persons for the accuracy of completeness of any such information.
Certain information set forth in this presentation is based upon data, documentation and/or other information obtained from various sources believed by WiL to be reliable. Neither WiL nor any of its affiliates has independently verified any such information and they shall not have any liability associated with the inaccuracy or inadequacy thereof. All of the information herein is subject to change without notice. Portfolio characteristics and other information are provided as of the dates set forth herein. Current or future characteristics and other information may vary significantly from those provided herein and the firm undertakes no obligation to notify the recipient of any such variances. Unless otherwise stated, all representations in this presentation are WiL’s beliefs based on sector knowledge and/or research.