Estonian AI-powered QA Startup Klaus Acquired by Zendesk
As AI drives up the speed and frequency of customer engagement, only AI-powered QA can help companies keep up with rising customer expectations.
Estonian-born startup Klaus, established in 2019 to enhance customer service agent capabilities, has been acquired by global customer services platform Zendesk. The acquisition amount remains undisclosed.
Zendesk's acquisition of Klaus follows its previous acquisition of Tymeshift, a workforce management tool, reflecting a broader trend of increased merger and acquisition activity driven by the recent downturn in the tech economy and accompanying drop in valuations.
Throughout its journey, Klaus raised a total of $19.3 million from prominent investors such as Global Founders Capital, Acton Capital, Icebreaker.vc, and Creandum.
Adrian McDermott, Zendesk's Chief Technology Officer, highlighted the strategic importance of incorporating Klaus into their Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) portfolio, stating, "With Klaus as part of our WEM portfolio, we can empower businesses with the best AI-powered automated quality assurance in the market."
Kair Käsper, Co-founder of Klaus, emphasized the critical role of AI-powered QA in meeting evolving customer expectations amid increasing speed and frequency of customer engagement. He stated, "As AI drives up the speed and frequency of customer engagement, only AI-powered QA can help companies keep up with rising customer expectations."
Initially focusing on enhancing customer service agent performance, Klaus evolved into a comprehensive quality assurance platform powered by AI. Co-founded by Kair Käsper and Martin Kõiva, former employees of Estonian unicorn Pipedrive, Klaus gained traction by catering to notable customers like Automattic, Wistia, and Soundcloud. By leveraging AI algorithms, Klaus automated tasks such as comment categorization, conversation sorting based on complexity, and sentiment analysis across multiple languages, ultimately enhancing the quality of customer-agent interactions.
The acquisition of Klaus by Zendesk marks a pivotal moment for both companies and underscores the growing importance of AI-powered solutions in the realm of customer experience management.
