The market value of AI customer service may be greater than we think. The Philippines, the “World’s Call Center”, generated revenue of $38 billion+ in the telephone customer service industry this year. As a leading AI customer service company, Sierra is very optimistic about investors.

01.1 Minute Project Overview

1. Project name: Sierra

2. Establishment time: 2023

3. Product introduction:

Sierra’s product is a conversational AI The customer service platform aims to provide enterprises with customized customer experience solutions.

4. Founding team:

Bret Taylor: former Salesforce co-CEO, OpenAI board of directors Chairman

Clay Bavor: worked at Google for 18 years and founded the AI ​​Lab and Workspace

5. Financing situation:

Received US$110 million in financing led by Sequoia Capital and Benchmark in February 2024, with a valuation of US$1 billion;

Received Greenoaks in October 2024 Capital led the investment, and ICONIQ and Thrive Capital participated in the US$175 million financing;

The current cumulative financing amount reaches 2.85 billion, with a valuation of $4.5 billion.

02. AI Agent company founded by technology tycoon

Sierra is an AI startup company focusing on enterprise solutions, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. From $1 billion in February to $4.5 billion today, Sierra's valuation has grown 3.5x in just a few months.

Recently, Sierra completed another $175 million round of financing, led by Greenoaks Capital, with participation from ICONIQ and Thrive Capital. How did Sierra achieve such a scale and speed of financing?

Sierra’s story begins with two heavyweights in the tech world - Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor.

Bret Taylor, the former Salesforce co-CEO, is not only well-known in Silicon Valley, but also the chairman of the OpenAI board of directors. Taylor has been involved in every corner of the tech world, from the creation of Google Maps to the chairmanship of Twitter, leading nearly every change in the industry.

Clay Bavor, a senior executive who has worked at Google for nearly two decades, has led cutting-edge projects such as virtual reality and Google Labs, and his innovations The spirit and deep understanding of technology have undoubtedly injected strong power into Sierra.

With these two giants in the technology industry joining hands, the birth of Sierra is not so unexpected.

Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor once said: "Our shared vision is to use artificial intelligence to Intelligent technology provides enterprises with a new customer service experience - a more natural, empathetic, and personalized conversational AI agent. ”

"This kind of AI Agents can not only answer customers' questions, but also solve practical problems, ranging from handling product exchanges to renewing subscriptions."

The two founders are even more present. The official website writes: "Elevate your customer experience with AI." (Use AI to enhance your customer experience.)

Today, this is far more than just A slogan is Sierra's commitment to every customer. Whether helping customers solve complex problems in real time or quickly adapting to business changes, Sierra's AI agents always provide solid support.

Sierra's success lies not only in the advancement of technology, but also in their deep understanding of customer needs and keen grasp of market trends.

They know that in this rapidly changing world, companies need not just an AI that can answer questions, but an AI that can represent the brand and convey value. , and create real connections with customers as smart partners.

03. All-in-one conversational AI platform

Sierra's core product is an innovative conversational AI platform that not only appears as a simple chat robot, but also can Intelligent agents that understand, predict and take action.

On call at any time

As a professional customer service platform, Sierra’s AI agent is online 7*24h. Not only can you quickly answer customer questions, but you can also demonstrate deep understanding and empathy for customers in your answers.

From simple queries to complex personalized questions, Sierra dramatically improves the customer experience quality.

Real-time support for customers

Sierra's AI agents can handle a variety of complex issues, including but not limited to processing exchanges, arranging deliveries, updating subscriptions, etc.

By integrating with systems of record such as order management systems and CRM, Sierra’s AI agents can operate directly in the background to provide customers with a seamless service experience.

Quickly adapt and continuously improve

Sierra's AI platform can respond quickly when the business changes, continuously improving the customer experience through analysis and reporting tools. This means that over time, Sierra’s AI agents will get smarter and better able to meet customer needs.

Open a new way of communication

In October this year, Sierra launched a revolutionary feature-AI voice function. Customers can call AI customer service directly as if they were talking to a real person.

The launch of voice function is also Sierr’sa Another major breakthrough in the field of AI customer service. Compared to real humans, Sierra’s AI agents are always available, infinitely patient, and capable of reasoning, predicting, and acting in real time.

Customized AI Agent

In addition to the above functions, another distinctive feature of Sierra is its high degree of customization.

Sierra allows each customer to customize the personality of their AI agents to fit their brand image. This means that whether it is a clothing brand pursuing youth and fashion, or a luxury brand pursuing professionalism and high-end, Sierra can provide AI customer service that is consistent with its brand tone.

After all, AI customer service is not only used as a transaction tool, but also represents the corresponding brand image.

Therefore, it is important that Sierra’s AI agents can communicate the brand’s values ​​and philosophy.

Avoid the "illusion" problem

Currently, in the field of AI customer service, there is one of the most common problems - "illusion deception", which means that when AI is not sure how to answer Might make up answers.

Sierra has also made some functional improvements and risk avoidance, that is, through built-in A supervision system is used to ensure the accuracy of AI customer service answers, evaluate topics and keywords in conversations in real time, and ensure that inappropriate content can be identified and blocked in a timely manner.

04. Self-development and industry competition

Currently, Sierra has cooperated with leading brands in multiple industries, such as ADT, Sonos, Weight Watchers, SiriusXM, OluKai, etc. Completed a total of 100,000 customer conversations.

Sierra's success relies heavily on its technological innovation and will continue to do so in the future. The company's use of "constellation" models and "supervisor" technology, as well as its reliance on large language models, are key to staying competitive.

This year, Sierra has adopted another major innovation - a performance-based billing model.

Different from traditional softwareSubscription fee or pay-per-use, "performance billing" means that customers only need to pay when the problem is actually solved. This model not only provides greater value to customers, but also creates a win-win partnership.

Sierra's approach to payment contrasts with many existing SaaS providers.

Under the traditional SaaS model, customers often need to pay for resources that exceed actual needs. Sierra's model is more flexible and fair. In the long run, this pay-for-results model will become increasingly popular in the market.

Sierra’s future development blueprint is undoubtedly ambitious.

Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor mentioned in an interview with CNBC that they hope to enable Sierra to serve the global market and expand into other industries-sales , marketing, human resources, etc. This cross-industry application will also create new growth opportunities for Sierra.

With the advancement of globalization and the acceleration of digital transformation, Sierra's internationalization pace will bring it new growth points.

According to relevant statistics, it is expected that AI will replace a large number of call center jobs globally in the next five years. With Sierra in front, Salesforce and Microsoft behind, the AI ​​customer service market is facing unprecedented development opportunities.

CRM Essentials analyst Brent Leary once expressed some views on this: "Sierra faces great difficulty in competing with giants like Salesforce. Although Sierra's There is sufficient funding, but its scale is far from comparable to Salesforce." In this regard, Ravi Gupta, a partner at Sequoia Capital who led the investment in Sierra, said: "I am not convinced. Sierra The company is very confident in its technology and potential. Among AI customer service players who serve as ‘brand ambassadors’, Sierra should have no rivals.”

As Ravi Gupta emphasized, Sierra's leading position in "brand ambassador" AI customer service shows its potential to surpass its peers. Looking forward to the future, driven by the dual-wheel drive of innovative technology and capital support, Sierra’s subsequent development is worth looking forward to.