San Francisco (California), Bucharest (Romania), November 16, 2023 – # rbj – Siena, a US-based start-up launched by Romanian founders that developed an autonomous AI customer service platform designed for e-commerce, raised $4.7M from a group of investors, including Sierra Ventures, Parri Passu Ventures, SpaceStation Investments, Village Global, The Council, and OpenSky Ventures. This investment will support Siena’s vision to transform customer service by integrating human empathy and intelligent automation.
The US start-up was created in 2022 in San Francisco (California) by the Romanian entrepreneurs Andrei Negrau (co-founder and CEO) and Lisa Popovici (co-founder and CMO). The two founders have nine years of e-commerce experience and are second-time founders in the conversational commerce space. The first e-commerce business the two founders launched was Cartloop in 2020.
Siena was built on three pillars:
1. Human-like empathy: Siena introduces AI Personas, allowing brands to craft a unique voice and style for their AI agents. This approach goes beyond the standard, offering entertaining and witty interactions on platforms like Instagram and maintaining professionalism in e-mails.
2. Gets the job done: Siena autonomously executes tasks assigned by brands, such as editing subscriptions or arranging replacements. Its capabilities include pulling data from connected systems, asking clarifying questions, and making real-time updates.
3. Human reasoning: Siena’s CORE (Cognitive Reasoning-Based Engine) uses reasoning-based decision-making to handle the complex reality of customer service. In this way, the AI assesses multiple factors in real-time, handling complex tasks like refund requests or multi-step retention plans for subscription brands.
One place for all channels
The platform autonomously handles up to 80% of all customer interactions across more than 100
languages and all channels (including e-mail, social DMs and comments). Siena resolves 80% of conversations with a 4.81 Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT score) based on over 50,000 customer satisfaction surveys.
“We started Siena from a simple question: «How can we create an AI-powered customer support solution that understands context, responds with empathy, and solves complex problems?». So, our vision was to transform customer service and create an autonomous AI that felt more like a human than a machine. Siena is already changing the everyday lives of customer service teams and consumers, but this is just the beginning. Our recent funding enables us to continue pushing the boundaries by making empathic AI the very backbone of modern CX. This pivotal moment marks not just an expansion but a redefinition of the customer service industry”, said Andrei Negrau, the Co-founder and CEO of Siena.
The co-founders are fervently committed to advancing Siena’s autonomous capabilities and integrations while executing a bold global expansion plan. Central to this strategy is enhancing its product suite, which is achieved by attracting elite talent in product development and go-to-market roles.
The company has a fully remote team of 23 people distributed across the globe and is actively seeking professionals in areas such as engineering, operations, product development, and go-to-market.
Siena works with dozens of e-commerce brands such as Kitsch, Simple Modern, Verb, or K18, from beauty, health and nutrition, food and beverage, and fashion.
Plans to launch its own learning hub: Siena AI Academy
Siena transforms customer service at scale for mid-market and enterprise e-commerce businesses, generating additional revenue, automating support tickets, and significantly reducing response and resolution times. Some of its notable achievements include $46,340 in additional revenue for Kitsch, 79% of support tickets automated for Simple Modern, a 60% drop in first response time, and a 45% drop in resolution time for Everyday Dos.
The founders plan to launch Siena AI Academy in Q1 2024, a learning hub to get teams up to speed on how to integrate AI into their customer service workflows. The curriculum is focused on
courses like “Building an AI Agent 101”, “Emotional Intelligence in AI”, and “The CX Metrics that Matter”.
Siena is an autonomous AI chat platform designed to elevate e-commerce by seamlessly integrating human empathy and intelligent automation into customer service. The start-up was created in 2022 in San Francisco, California, by Andrei Negrau (co-founder and CEO) and Lisa Popovici (co-founder and CMO), two entrepreneurs with nine years of e-commerce experience and second-time founders in the conversational commerce space.
