Swiss SaaS start-up GUURU announced today that it has closed a USD 5 million Series A extension, which brings the total Series A financing to USD 7.9 million. The funds will be used to expand market reach in Europe and support GUURU’s ambitious growth plans. The financing round was led by Spark Invest and joined by existing investors Verve Ventures, EquityPitcher Ventures, and Swiss Post Ventures. Verve Ventures contributed USD 1.9 million and has backed GUURU since its Seed round in 2018.

GUURU provides a cost-effective and highly scalable solution, which meets the expectations of today’s consumers. While companies tend to opt for a chatbot or self-service options and limit access to human support for cost reasons, GUURU understands that consumers still want to be able to access human support for personalized product advice. GUURU offers a smart solution, which combines AI with human support.

On the GUURU platform, companies let their community of experienced product users help support seeking customers in real-time as well as provide feedback of their chats to the smart bot, which significantly accelerates its learning curve. Often repeated questions can therefore quickly be identified and automated. AI recognizes the content of the question and sends it to the best source of knowledge. Customer requests can therefore be answered around the clock, with the best possible quality at the lowest possible cost. Inhouse customer service agents can keep their focus on complex customer cases.

The funding round comes towards the end of GUURU’s 3rd full year after market entry. Today, customers in 12 different languages and regions benefit from the always-on support of GUURU. The company plans to double down on its expansion in Europe whilst continuing investments into the product, particularly in its AI with human-in-the-loop technology.

GUURU’s co-founder & CEO, Tonio Meier comments: “We are excited about taking the next steps and accelerating growth, whilst keeping the company at the verge of profitability. With our exceptional team and experienced set of investors, we feel well equipped to go after our next milestones.”

In this interview with Verve Ventures from March 2020, Tonio explains how GUURU helps customers cope with a large increase in customer support requests.

Why we invested in GUURU:

  • GUURU has a compelling and cost-effective solution to address the customer care market which is growing by 9% annually and is projected to reach USD 407 billion in 2022.
  • Covid-19 has accelerated the shift towards e-commerce which has further increased the load on customer service. Eager to reduce their reliance on call centers, companies find GUURU’s offering relevant.
  • GUURU offers a compelling first customer contact solution with a combination of human experts, a chatbot, which becomes more powerful thanks to feedback from the experts, and a voice channel that will be added soon.
  • GUURU receives extremely positive customer feedback, such as an average customer satisfaction rate of 4.3/5 and a  significant +20% increase in NPS scores resulting in higher conversion rates of up to  100%. This creates stickiness with existing customers and opportunities for upselling to existing clients.
  • GUURU has managed to acquire renowned international brands such as Sky, Toom, Vertbaudet, Coop, Ricardo, Salt, Brack.ch, Freitag, and many more.