Klark's proposal: 50 cents per customer service ticket processed

Not a week goes by without the birth of a new start-up aiming to improve customer service using generative AI. After Klarna, whose chatbot is said to have the same performance as Mbappé on a good day (now that's bullshit), ex-Konecta Patrice Mazoyer announced last week the creation of Yampa.ai (a personalised customer service assistant) with a few partners. In Bordeaux, Klark has been offering to pre-write the response that the customer service agent will then validate and send, archiving it in Zendesk, Front and Freshdesk.  Some of the most widely used customer service ticketing tools in the world.

Klark offers to pre-check customer service responses. No need to think about the wording or placement of a point in your reply email, the AI takes care of it. This kind of editorial support has become increasingly effective since the arrival of chatGPT. Founded in July 2023 in Bordeaux by Nicolas Pellissier (formerly of Back Market), James Rebours (former COO of C-Logistics) and Yoann Chambrun, Klark.AI recently raised €1.7 million from investors. The start-up already has a number of customers, including Ba&sh, Voggt and Asphalte, and aims to have a hundred or so by the end of 2024.

Klark makes its money by charging for the answers suggested by its AI, when the customer uses them: around 50 cents per answer, with 40 to 50% of suggested answers being used. Klark's AI first analyses the customer's service history to adopt its style (the tone of voice) and understand the technical nature of the industry in question. Once personalised, the AI writes answers to the questions received by the service in three seconds, using the model of one of the three major players in generative AI: chatGPT, Claude or Mistral AI.

Although the solution is already up and running, it is nevertheless entering a highly competitive market (Mayday, Zendesk, Owi, etc.) with a significant risk of regulation: the IA act recently passed by MEPs, as well as the RGPD, are both likely to affect Klark. Although the company had a small stand, it received a lot of traffic during the first two days of All 4 Customer, the souk of customer experience and digital marketing, as it is known. That's the whole point of a souk: thousands of slippers wink at you, seemingly all the same, but one shopkeeper will be able to explain the history and manufacturing secrets of HIS pair of slippers, and the process of vegetable tanning of goatskin. And the deal is done, or not!

Other visitors to the stand included Denis Marsault, founder of Myopla, who was on hand to answer the questions he quickly put to the Klark founders; Pierre Latscha from Onepilot, who was asked by the same Klark co-founders about the pitfalls that cascade down when a start-up needs to grow from €1m to €10m (which Onepilot has managed to do, notably by recently acquiring Eodom); and Frédéric Donati from Comete.ai. In short, the good, the curious. Those who get to the heart of the matter quickly, and don't put off studying a technical or commercial opportunity until a meeting with members of their in-house team.

Curiosity, if I've understood correctly and watched the video of James Rebours, one of the partners, on Welcome to the Jungle, is an expected quality if you want to join the Klark.AI team, which is recruiting. 

The best generative AI tool for optimising customer service?

Does Klark offer, as the tagline on its website proudly announces, "the best generative AI tool for optimising customer service? We'll see when we use it and over time:

- Klark. AI to easiware, the French CRM software for customer service, which doesn't seem to be connected. What is easiware's CPO doing? Hop, visit recommended today: only 20 metres separate the two stands.

- The solution will have to be taken on board very quickly by a major player in the delivery sector. Wismo (where's my parcel?) will be the most frequently asked question in e-retail customer services in 2022 and 2023. We recommend a visit to the OceanCall or Intelcia stands today, both of which have the good fortune to serve Pick-up Services, as reported here. The decision-makers are there, so make the most of it.

- further funding will have to be raised (the first 1.7 million will be quickly used up). For some of the founders, who are married with children, it's an arduous task to reconcile everything. On the road to success and strong growth, major obstacles would soon arise.

Those of us from Bordeaux who have passed through the best preparatory classes (Pasteur, Stanislas), engineering schools (Les Ponts Paristech) or university (Marne la Vallée) have already understood one thing: a good customer service response is one that contains the right elements (1), is written in the right tone and form* (2), arrives as quickly as possible (3), and ideally on the customer's preferred channel (4). Items 3 and 4 are not yet covered by Klark. AI, which currently manages asynchronous response by email. 

For item 2, we will reread or discover or reread with interest a certain Vladimir Jankélévitch. 

For item 4, we haven't yet done any better than contact centres or voicebots. That's my opinion, and I share it, as Coluche used to say. This is the last day of the All 4 Customer show. It's bargain basement day!

"The manner of giving is better than gifts; the manner of saying, diction or lection, is better than words: but the manner of these manners is better than everything, and it goes beyond the gift, the diction and the operation just as much as they go beyond the gift, the thing said or the work. And all the same: the way of saying is infinitely more than the thing done. Vladimir Jankélévitch, The I don't know what and the almost nothing.

Manuel Jacquinet.