Slang.ai – an AI-powered phone answering product that emerged from stealth – announced it has raised $20 million in funding. This funding includes a recent Series A round led by Homebrew with participation from Stage 2 Capital, Wing VC, Underscore VC, Active Capital, and Collide Capital. And prominent industry angel investors, including celebrity chef Tom Colicchio and Scott Belsky, Founder of Behance, also participated in the round. Existing investors include executives from leading technology businesses like Snap, Zoom, and others.
Everyone becomes frustrated with the experience of calling a business. And no one likes waiting on hold with a retailer to check on an order status or calling their local restaurant to make a last-minute reservation and having their call go straight to voicemail. AI has the potential to fix this broken experience and Slang.ai is bringing AI to the phone with its easy-to-use software product designed for restaurants and retail businesses. The Series A funding round will accelerate Slang’s generative AI capabilities, advance product partnerships and integrations in the restaurant, hospitality, retail, and e-commerce industries, and double down on the sustained growth of the go-to-market team.
Slang.ai’s solution creates a better experience for the customer and it also creates quick value for businesses by increasing revenue, reducing staff phone time, and instantly resolving customer demands without human intervention. And Slang.ai’s product provides smarter, AI-powered phone agents specifically tailored for restaurants and retail businesses, helping them answer phone calls more effectively. The platform utilizes natural language processing technology to automate reservations, orders, and dozens of common questions using audio experiences that engage and satisfy their customers.
With a simple 30-minute onboarding process, Slang has grown quickly to more than 200 customers, including Slutty Vegan, Palm House Hospitality Group, STUDS, PLANTA, Hammitt, and Nikki Beach Miami. This strong customer traction has resulted in over 6x revenue growth in 2022.
Even with the rise of apps and websites, 60% of customers still prefer to contact businesses over the phone. Despite this, many brick-and-mortar businesses are understaffed, causing them to miss calls and send potential customers to voicemail where they lose out on potential revenue. And Slang.ai is transformative for these businesses, handling over half of the inbound calls without human intervention, allowing these businesses to recover those customers. In a recent study of a six-restaurant group, Slang.ai saved 648 hours of phone time while capturing reservations and orders that otherwise might have been lost to voicemail.
Slang.ai provides its clients access to previously unknown data about why customers are calling. And this information empowers businesses to re-engage with their phone customers and pursue opportunities to drive additional revenue.
The company’s product is also fully customizable for each client’s unique brand with a diverse portfolio of digital voices, customizable language, and brandable background sounds.
KEY QUOTES:
“With the emergence of generative AI, businesses are searching for real-world applications for this powerful technology. For decades, customers have experienced the frustrating process of calling a business and being put on hold in order to make a new appointment or say they’re running late for a reservation. Now, there is a better way. We’re excited to help businesses use this technology to dramatically improve the phone experience, helping them serve their customers better than they ever thought possible.”
“We’re focusing not just on the automation but also on delivering a truly delightful audio experience. We are ecstatic when we see callers tell our virtual assistants things like ‘wow I never thought a robot could do that’ and ‘you were so helpful, I love you!’ We’re reshaping what it means to have an automated, AI experience, and helping everyone realize that in this new AI-era, great automated customer experiences are possible.”
“This round of financing validates our vision and the disruptive potential of AI for businesses of any size. Our customers love Slang.ai’s ability to deliver a premium customer experience and with this infusion of capital, we are ready to take our product to the next level through new integrations with reservation management platforms and more advanced product capabilities powered by generative AI.”
— Slang.ai CEO and Co-Founder, Alex Sambvani
“Slang.ai has been a game changer, helping us to answer calls and serve our clients more consistently than we could with our team alone. One of the most appealing parts of Slang.ai is how quick the onboarding process is.”
— Anthony Drockton, Co-founder and Chairman of Hammitt
“Slang.ai has become an essential tool for our business. Our team is thrilled with the way it has decreased the disruption of phone calls while simultaneously enhancing the overall experience for our guests. With the intentional use of AI at our disposal, we don’t see ourselves going back.”
— Benson Wang, CEO of Palm House Hospitality Group
“The phone is a channel rich with data, but we had no way to access it before Slang.ai. We now understand categorically what our guests call for and can modify the AI verbiage to quickly address guest needs. In addition to the insight provided, the increased efficiency allows us to rapidly attend to our callers all the while making more time for those standing in front of us.”
— Paul Weinstein, Senior Director of Restaurants at PLANTA
“We are impressed by Slang.ai’s focus on applying this technology to create tangible business value for their customers with a delightful product. Slang.ai’s Co-founders are technologists who have been building in the AI space for over seven years, and they have accomplished the remarkable feat of developing an AI product that customers actually want and that is easy to use. With their backgrounds building leading personalization experiences as Data Scientists at Spotify, we’re confident in their ability to continue to innovate in this space.”
— Homebrew Partner Satya Patel
