Dave Hayes, Denis McCarthy and Gavin Coakley are the founders of HappyPath Labs, an AI-enabled start-up aiming to provide customer feedback faster, cheaper and more accurately than the traditional ways of gauging customer reaction to products and services.
To achieve this, they have developed Fizz, a SaaS analytics and quality assurance platform that combines AI’s ability to process large volumes of information at speed with their respective expertise in software development and contact centre operations management.
“Businesses generally have two key questions they want answered: what are our customers saying, and are they happy, frustrated or somewhere in between,” Coakley says.
“Traditionally, there were two primary ways to answer these questions. The first, and most labour-intensive, involved manually listening to countless voice interactions or painstakingly reviewing webchat and email transcripts to try and piece together a picture of customer sentiment. The resources and costs associated with this were significant.
It’s this combination of manual and automated quality assurance, coupled with AI-driven business insights, that sets Fizz apart
The second was to ask customers directly through surveys which often suffer from low response rates and may not capture the nuances of every interaction.
“AI and machine learning have changed this landscape dramatically,” he adds. “Processes that once consumed weeks can now be completed in mere minutes at a fraction of the cost. Recognising this transformative potential, we set up Happy Path Labs in 2022 to develop Fizz which will have its commercial launch this month.”
Fizz, which is currently in Beta with a large business process outsourcing customer, will be the company’s flagship SaaS product and will be charged for on a consumption basis.
The company will have two other revenue streams: contact centre consultancy that will advise on everything from technology architecture to developing the consumer experience and the design, development and implementation of customer contact centre technology underpinned by Amazon Web Services.
“Fizz does the heavy lifting for our customers and provides them with objective insights based on the relevant set perimeters. It can also review interactions at scale, analyse sentiment and categorise calls by reason or subject matter,” Coakley says.
“It is industry and geographically agnostic and goes beyond traditional quality assurance by providing comprehensive business insights and turning customer interaction data into actionable intelligence, detailing customer sentiment, agent performance trends, contact drivers and the overall business context of customer support.
Whether it’s a small business or a large enterprise, Fizz can scale to meet its needs
“It’s this combination of manual and automated QA [quality assurance], coupled with AI-driven business insights, that sets Fizz apart, gives customers more for their money and will disrupt the market as one holistic, integrated solution.”
Investment to date in the business is around €450,000 between founder funds and support from the North & West Cork local enterprise board. The company is based in Clonakilty and employs eight people and one contractor full-time.
Coakley says the company’s solution will be of interest to C-suite executives and anyone with a strategic role within an organisation as well as to those responsible for operations management.
“For senior decision-makers, Fizz provides critical insights while also helping to drive day-to-day and medium-term improvements at an operational level. So, whether it’s a small business or a large enterprise, Fizz can scale to meet its needs.
Processes that once consumed weeks can now be completed in mere minutes at a fraction of the cost
“It’s well-suited to both private and public sector organisations, as it automatically redacts personally identifiable information to ensure data privacy, and can auto-categorise interactions to help businesses quickly identify trends and common issues.
“We also allow customisable prompts, so a customer can tailor the business insights to the specific questions and information most vital to their organisation.”
Fizz will start by launching into Ireland and Britain but, as the founders have a wide network of industry connections between them, they are already talking to potential customers in Australia, South Africa and Poland.
“We have a healthy pre-launch ‘interest’ list, and will also be going down the route of developing partnerships and strategic alliances,” Coakley says.
