Better Know A Startup: CogniCor (@cognicor)

Let’s face it; complaint resolution is one of the key pillars to the success of any service-based business. What differentiates a good company from the rest is how they deal with their customers’ problems. Get it right and you have a loyal customer base.  However, get it wrong and say goodbye world domination.

How many of you can actually say that the customer service you receive is all-in-all great, or even good for that matter? Can you say that they are efficient and friendly? Not me, I can tell you that for sure. Living in Spain and dealing with companies such as Orange is enough to make any sane person pick up some Valium for those day-long phone calls that leave you in a state of disrepair.

Sindhu Joseph decided enough was enough and created CogniCor after airlines lost her luggage one too many times and never offered a correct or timely solution. Using technology that Sindhu developed during her Ph.D at the Spanish Institute of Artificial Intelligence, CogniCor is an automated complaint resolution service, which won the Tech All Stars Competition in 2012 by the European Digital Assembly.

Founded by Sindhu, whom also holds 6 separate US technology patents, the innovative startup has been designed for the service industries such as telecom, aviation, financial and utilities to help resolve their complaints more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost of their current customer service expenditure. In the words of Sindhu, CogniCor is “An enterprise solution to make customer engagement more successful. We basically make the complaints resolution processes faster and less costly”. The reduction in costs is one of the prime advantages that Cognicor offers. According to Sindhu, “The resolution of one complaint represents a cost of between €10 to €50 for our target companies, however with CogniCor this cost wouldn’t surpass €2”.

Apart from cutting a company’s costs, CogniCor solves time consuming problems, such as lost baggage or overcharges in phone bills, for consumers. These are every day “pain in the ass” problems that have a huge impact on customer satisfaction. Given that only a small portion of complaints are complex in nature, Sindhu believes that CognCor will be able to resolve around 60% of all problems automatically with advanced technology that is able to learn from the previous complaints to provide better solutions. Cognicor gives you a fast and efficient resolution without the need of picking up the phone and being put on hold forever. Who likes dealing with call centers anyway?

While initially focused on the automatic resolution of complaints, Sindhu is interested in expanding the service to any agreement. To give an example, imagine bargaining for that new Telsa Model S you have been ogling for the last 3 months, instead of wasting time haggling with a real human, CogniCor could provide counteroffers and help you reach an agreement more quickly. The result: a happy customer with a big smile on their face without having to spend time negotiating with some pompous salesman!

With clients such as Telefonica already onboard, Sindhu and team are off to a great start and have just raised a round of €660,000 from a diverse group of angel investors to allow them to take their product international.  Keep an eye on Cognicor because something tells me this disruptive startup has room to run!