Observe.ai raises $26 million for AI that monitors and coaches call center agents

Countless tech platforms are setting out to help call centers automate conversations with their customers. But U.S-Indian startup and Y Combinator alum Observe.ai is bucking that trend by using AI to help coach human call center workers, rather than replace them. Today the company announced it has raised $26 million in a series A round of funding to further this mission. It then automatically transcribes each call and carries out sentiment analysis to determine customer satisfaction while drawing correlations between the words and actions of the support agent and the happiness of the customer. Top-performing agents can be used as benchmarks to determine what works, which can then help train new or under-performing support staff.