Crescendo Names Zack Urlocker as COO, Targets the Enterprise

Press Release
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SAN FRANCISCO – OCT. 2, 2024 – Crescendo, creators of the first augmented-AI customer experience (CX) platform, today announced the closing of a series of venture round financings totaling $50 million. General Catalyst, where the company was conceived, led its latest Series C fundraise. Other investors participating include Celesta Capital, Alorica and strategic angels. The company was valued at $500 million post this investment.

“This company is moving at the speed of AI and growing fast,” said Andy Lee, Chairman of Crescendo and founder of one of the market’s largest service providers who saw an opportunity to reshape a half-trillion dollar industry.

Rather than selling conversational AI software alone, Crescendo created an Augmented AI solution that delivers unrivaled accuracy and quality using humans-in-the-loop. By owning the entire interaction, Crescendo can deliver a superior customer experience quickly by charging customers by outcome, not the industry-standard hourly rate or headcount model.

Less than one year old, Crescendo has already scaled its operations to six continents by acquiring PartnerHero, a leading customer operations outsourcing provider. Crescendo’s innovative augmented-AI platform has been in production deployment since late 2023 with zero customer downtime to date.

“Crescendo aligns perfectly with our focus on companies disrupting large industries by accelerating the adoption of emerging technologies like generative AI,” said Sriram Viswanathan, Founding Managing Partner at Celesta.

This unique business model was originally conceived by Crescendo President and co-founder Anand Chandrasekaran while he was a Partner at General Catalyst, along with General Catalyst CEO and Managing Director, Hemant Taneja.

“Our value proposition is to offer a full stack contact center solution with outcome-driven pricing,” said Chandrasekaran. “That proposition was driven by our insight that AI offered a unique ‘why now’ moment to address the 20-year misalignment in the contact center industry in how it serves and charges customers. We believe this could be one of the most meaningful technology innovations in contact centers in over two decades.”

General Catalyst has remained heavily involved in the rapid growth of Crescendo since first incubating the concept and backing the company. GC has also previously spawned successful companies like Kayak, Demandware and Livongo.

“Crescendo represents a whole new paradigm in customer experience platforms with its ability to deliver significantly better service through AI while ensuring quality control and learning from every transaction with human experts,” said Taneja. “We believe in the unique Venture Buyout Model (VBO) pioneered by General Catalyst, which Crescendo embodies, enabling them to accelerate their model significantly faster and bring more applied AI to enterprises sooner.”

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"Customers love pricing based on results and that we can delight their callers with fast, automated answers personalized for that company with a human domain expert always on hand to resolve the most difficult issues."

Matt Price, CEO at Crescendo