“We have all had some bad experience with a customer service telephone service, having to wait a long time or having to be transferred from department to department”, says Albert Mendieta. Far from being content with this and as a result of their experience working in after-sales services, at the end of 2020, Roger Comas, Joan Gallego and Albert Mendieta founded Kokuai, a startup for the automation of customer service.
It didn't take long for the entrepreneurs to see that the importance lay in the channel and that the channel that aroused the greatest interest among their customers was the WhatsApp instant messaging application. As a result of this discovery, the three founders opted to focus Kokuai's activity on this popular application. "WhatsApp is used by more than two billion people in more than 180 countries around the world and by people of all ages," Mendieta points out.
At the beginning of this year, Kokuai launched "a conversational platform that allows companies to interact with their customers through WhatsApp," explains Albert Mendieta. The entrepreneurs plan to bill more than 100,000 euros exclusively with this new solution, throughout what will be its first year of operation.
Thanks to the use of conversational technology and artificial intelligence tools, Kokuai makes it possible to offer post-sales service via WhatsApp (and other messaging channels), carry out promotional actions and provide support during the purchase or contracting process. On the other hand, Mendieta advances that they are already preparing for what is known as conversational commerce, that is, sales through messaging channels. The co-founder assures that conversational commerce is already predominant in Asia and that it is registering great growth in Latin America. "Later on, it may already be possible to make the payment without leaving WhatsApp," predicts Mendieta.
With headquarters in Barcelona Activa and a team of six people, Kokuai has managed to raise 250,000 euros in financing, of which 100,000 euros come from an Enisa loan and 150,000 euros have been contributed by investors coming mostly from the Catalan entrepreneurial ecosystem. The founders aspire to be "the reference platform in Spain for companies that want to interact with their customers via WhatsApp", in the words of Mendieta. Once the national market has been conquered, starting in 2024, they plan to make the leap to other countries.
