With an innovative combination of people and AI, Support Squad provides complete customer service for retail and e-commerce companies. The startup from Leeuwarden raised €200,000 in funding to further develop the platform and AI applications and increase brand awareness. This funding round was led by FOM and NOM.
Support Squad was founded in 2023 and works with brands such as Hertog Jan, Marcel's Green Soap and KHAIZEN. 'By combining AI-driven automation with human expertise, we ensure that customers are always helped quickly, accurately and personally,' said Michel Norbruis, co-founder of Support Squad. 'And that is ideal for brands and web shops that place great value on customer satisfaction and brand experience, because good customer service is just as important in that. And we can completely relieve them of that.'
Smart mix of people and technology
According to Norbruis, automation and AI are a means and not an end in themselves: "Our starting point is always to help customers as well as possible, because often their experience with customer service is not positive. Think for example of long waiting times and service employees who are not allowed to deviate from a script and have to handle a call as quickly as possible. We therefore look at how we can cleverly use our technology to make processes much more efficient, so that a customer service representative can help people quickly and properly. Customers are always dealing with a human being in this, because our technology is mainly on the back end.'
'Suppose, for example, that a customer has not received a package,' Norbruis continues. 'A customer service employee then often has to manually consult different systems to figure out the problem. Our AI technology is linked to all major systems, such as those of Bol, Shopify and Monta, and can therefore figure out in milliseconds where it went wrong. That is then translated into actions that an employee must take to solve the problem immediately for a customer.'
Plenty of opportunities
'AI lends itself perfectly to repetitive tasks that otherwise take a lot of time and effort, and thus offers plenty of opportunities to solve problems much faster and more efficiently,' said FOM Investment Manager Reno Minnema. 'That is exactly what Support Squad does, so that was also an important reason for us to help the company with the next steps.'
'The team of Support Squad has a lot of relevant experience, complements each other well and knows what is going on in the market. They understand very well where the pain points of their customers lie,' adds NOM Investment Manager Boudewijn Hulst. 'And they know how to translate that into a strong product that is very well received. That gives us a lot of confidence in Support Squad's future plans.'
Momentum
With this funding round, Support Squad wants to further develop its platform and AI applications and further increase brand awareness. 'Almost every company is now looking at the possibilities of AI, so we must now seize this momentum as a company, so that web shops and brands also know how to find us,' says Norbruis. "With this funding we can take the first steps in that and at the same time we want to show what we are worth. After that, we want to see if we can take even bigger steps as a company with a possible follow-up round.