- An AI platform that reduces time and expense of after-sales service booking by 80%
- €150,000 – targeted funding for the development of the AI platform
- 350,000 appointments for 3,000 business customers in the first nine months of 2021
- Ziora, a technology start-up that developed an app for business management and online appointments used by beauty salons, medical clinics, and sports clubs, aims to raise €150.000 this year to develop an Artificial Intelligence platform to automate after-sales service. The AI module would reduce after-sales service costs by 80% and enables faster onboarding of new customers.
The company is part of accelerators such as Commons Accel, Launch, or Startarium and is already in discussions to finance the AI module.
Ziora will initially implement the AI platform in its app and then adapt it for other software created for beauty salons, medical clinics, sports clubs, or wellness salons.
Ziora currently automates appointments and helps beauty salons, wellness salons, medical clinics, and sports clubs to do targeted marketing and increase their revenues. Ziora can be used for any business that requires planning and scheduling. The app also allows service providers to develop a personalized relationship with their clients, leading to customer loyalty, without charging money per appointment.
350,000 appointments in the first nine months of 2021
In the first nine months of the year, 350,000 appointments were created through Ziora for 3,000 business customers in 20 cities across Romania.
“Although we have created an intuitive interface and tutorials, almost 60% of customers require online or phone instruction for the initial use and the new features. The time we spend on after-sales service is 2-3 times longer than the time required for the actual sale. Using AI technology, we will constantly interact with the users to guide them to use all the features of the application. The information changes from «What does it do?» to «How does the app do it?”, says Marius Chiriță, CEO and co-founder of Ziora.
The new investment that Ziora is targeting will be in addition to the €50.000 investment brought in by the founders and a group of private investors, including members of TechAngels Romania.
Ziora’s investors include Lucian Rotar, a serial entrepreneur and consultant for several companies in France and Romania, and Mihai Guran, vice president of TechAngels Romania and CEO of Guran Consulting Global. They are also part of Ziora’s Advisory Board with the role of strategically overseeing the company’s actions.
“With this Artificial Intelligence module we overcome the reluctance to change of users, especially employees, and we decrease the effort and learning time of using the application. In addition, we significantly reduce or even eliminate the expenses for training and customer retention because there is no need for phone or online training, dedicated tutorials, and the permanent updating of the user guide. These problems are common to all app developers and the solution lies in the self-learning solutions provided by Machine Learning. For example, the global market of software applications for dental clinics exceeded $1.3 billion in 2020 and could reach $3.4 billion by 2027, according to Global Market Insights, one of the growth factors being the major impact that AI tools bring within the implementation,” adds Marius Chiriță.
