What is the benefit of artificial intelligence? Automating repetitive tasks for very busy people running small businesses, according to a Berlin-based startup SynthefloAmazon has announced a $7.4 million funding round for its no-code platform for SMBs for AI voice assistance.
Since its founding around the spring of last year, the startup has now raised a total of $9.1 million, underscoring investors’ continued enthusiasm for accelerating generative AI applications.
The startup also claims to be approaching 1,000 customers — and touts “double-digit” monthly growth rates since emerging from stealth development to launch the browser-based “no-code” tool in December 2023. This suggests a healthy appetite among SMBs to adopt — or at least experiment with — generative AI tools that promise accessible productivity gains.
The new funding will be pumped into research and development, according to Synthflow CEO and co-founder Hakob Astabatsyan, who says the team is keen to continue building on its early momentum by increasing the utility of the product and expanding the range of SMEs it attracts.
“We have a lot of ideas. We know exactly what customers need,” he tells TechCrunch.
Astabatsyan, a serial entrepreneur with a business background, previously worked at Rocket Internet. Joining him in his latest project is his brother Albert, who also worked with him on a previous no-code startup; and Sasun Mirzakhan Saki, who brings to the team a background in software engineering and CTO experience.
While the Synthflow product started out with English call handling because its largest market is English-speaking, it has since added German and French versions (note: these are still in beta). So a focus on recent markets in Europe is also on the cards.
End-to-end experience
Contact centers were early adopters of voice AI agents, relying on APIs for large language models (LLMs) to power systems that could answer phone calls in a human-like way—only with tireless energy and enthusiasm 24/7, if not always flawless understanding.
Synthflow takes the concept in a slightly different direction, targeting service-focused SMBs directly, including those at the smaller end of the spectrum with a DIY “no-code” offering. The goal is to provide a comprehensive SMB experience, says Astapatsian, who sees the ROI of being able to automate basic tasks like appointment scheduling as immediately apparent to resource-strapped target businesses.
“AI can do this in a more affordable and reliable way, and humans can do other things,” is his brief pitch for the voice assistant.
He gives the example of a technician or mechanic who usually answers the phone himself when he’s not working on a job – meaning he inevitably ends up missing a lot of calls and losing some business as a result; Or a dentist employs a receptionist who works limited hours and therefore, again, is not always available to answer the phone.
Having a tool that can handle basic customer inquiries can be a game-changer for small businesses, Astabatsyan says.
Synthflow’s goal of SMBs necessarily means that the startup’s primary focus is making AI technology accessible to non-technical users — which is why it has built a no-code interface for its customers to design voice agents that fit their business needs.
“We wanted to try to build something simple,” he explains. “There’s no code layer on top [of AI agents] So… business owners, business-minded people can enjoy this, learn about it and explore what MBAs can do for their businesses.
The Synthflow interface allows customers to drag and drop elements to configure voice AI systems that can perform specific tasks for them – such as scheduling appointments; Run through the FAQ. Or perform “information mining,” such as obtaining personal information from a potential customer so that a human can contact them back.
“Let’s say if someone were to call, and there were a certain set of questions to ask and collect certain pieces of information — especially static ones, like address, home, etc. — then AI is pretty good,” he says. .
The customer can choose to configure the AI assistant so that it reveals that it is a robot. “I think it’s a very good practice to disclose that it’s a virtual assistant,” Astabatsyan says. “My personal favorite opening is: ‘Hi. My name is [so-and-so],At the moment, all our lines are busy. I apologize for that. I’m the virtual assistant here at [the name of the business]. how can i help you?’.”
According to Astabatsyan, another big benefit of voice AI is recognizing when a call should be transferred to a human agent. So, essentially using AI to filter incoming calls based on complexity – with automation taking over simple requests increases the benefit by freeing up human agents to have more time to spend on more complex customer inquiries.
He stresses that the goal is not to replace human jobs, but rather suggests that AI can help SMEs be more productive and efficient than they could be with their limited resources.
That’s why, in addition to allowing customers to deploy voice agents, Synthflow’s system is designed to take care of post-call data entry tasks as well – adding appointments to the calendar widget, for example. Therefore, building integrations with third-party software is another big focus for the team.
“This is what AI is good at,” he argues. “Because he can take this information [extracted from a call] And let’s say, updating certain areas of your CRM in particular – and if you do these things at scale, across hundreds or thousands of calls, suddenly we see this technological advantage that we saw [when businesses first adopted] Computers.”
For voice agents, the startup relies on OpenAI’s GPT LLM, but also integrates its own AI models on top — which Astabatsyan says is trained on its own data and fine-tuned for specific customer use cases.
He says he has also built its own “audio orchestration layer” that converts a customer’s speech into text that can then be fed to the AI model as a prompt, returning an automated answer that the system converts from text to speech that the customer hears as the synthesized voice on the other end of the phone line.
Right now, Synthflow is focused on using AI in inbound calls – which Astabatsyan sees as the easiest automation solution for resource-strapped companies. But it hints at more advanced development capabilities, with R&D supported by a massive seed funding round.
One of the things he mentioned they’re working on is a feature that would enable Synthflow’s voice AI to perform what it refers to as “direct actions” or “communications” — meaning that during a call the AI would be able to perform a live check of inventory in the warehouse. Or pull out another piece of required information and “push it somewhere else,” he says.
It also paints a scenario where task-focused voice AI systems will be able to expand their usefulness en masse. They can hand off a call to other dedicated voice AI systems trained for different tasks requested by the customer.
“The key here is to focus on who your customers are. Because, depending on who’s building this product, your product is going to be very, very, very different.
One implication to consider is that, if voice AIs and voice assistant systems live up to the productivity hype – they brilliantly deliver on the promise of efficiently handling a whole layer of customer inquiries, including by expertly rerouting the more complex stuff into the system. appropriate or to a human to handle it with – the average SME can end up discovering that it has a lot of work to do.
“I think that’s an interesting question for a lot of managers and leaders, right?” he answers, discussing this scenario. “For example, if there’s a lot of capacity — and productivity is being unleashed — how can we channel those human resources into other sectors of the economy? Because I think that’s a question that hasn’t been answered yet, but it’s a really interesting question.”
Synthflow’s seed funding is led by Singular, with participation from existing investor Atlantic Labs and a number of AI investors, including the founders of Krisp AI.