Interactions Raises $56 Million In New Funding

OK, so we all know how annoying — if not driving you to hang up — it can be when you call an automated line to try and pay your cellphone bill or whatever, and you get nothing but automated prompts that don’t help you solve the problem or get you any closer to the reason you called in the first place.

But Interactions, a 12-year-old virtual assistant startup out of Franklin, Massachusetts, has been amping up its language processing tech in order to meet full “functionality,” according to TechCrunch.

Interactions said on Tuesday (Aug. 9) that it had secured $56 million in funding led by Revolution Growth, NewSpring Capital and Comcast Ventures.

According to TechCrunch, Interactions has thus far secured $167 million in total funding.

“Just having the endorsement of these firms really speaks to the credibility of what we’re doing in the market,” Interactions CEO Mike Iacobucci said to TechCrunch.

Interactions says that it has processed more than 2 billion customer support calls and chats since 2004, and SiliconANGLE noted that Iacobucci claims that Interactions has “significantly improved its virtual assistant software along the way to the point where up to 98 percent of questions are now recognized correctly. He admitted the system only achieves an accuracy rate in the ‘high seventies’ when handling certain complex phone inquiries, but that still gives it an edge over many of the newer competitors out there.”