UNITE commercializes a service that processes inside sales in a short period of time

Kyoto-based startup Nota announced today that it has raised 500 million yen in Series B funding. One Capital was the lead investor in the round, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Hakuhodo DY Ventures, and Persol Process & Technology. As far as has been made public, it will be Nota's first funding since November 2014.

Nota was founded in 2007 by Isshu Rakusai, an "unexplored" programmer at the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA). In 2014, Toshiyuki Masui (currently a professor at the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University), known for developing flick input for the Apple iPhone, was appointed as his CTO. So far, we have developed services such as “Gyazo”, a service that allows you to share captured images with others, and “Scrapbox”, a CMS that allows you to create Wiki-like content.

The search-type FAQ SaaS "Helpfeel", which has been deployed since October 2019, is Nota's first B2B service. By incorporating FAQs provided by various web services and improving their searchability, the number of inquiries has been reduced to 60% compared to before. Using technology that expands the range of keywords for questions submitted by users up to 50 times, even if there are mistakes in the way the questions are asked or typos, it will guide you to the correct answer.

This is made possible by Masui's original algorithm "Intent Prediction Search", which predicts the question the user wants to ask from the input word and searches for related articles. making it possible. Even if the keyword does not hit exactly with that word, it is possible to reach the desired answer, and as a result, it is possible to reduce the work of inquiries and call center operators.

Users who call the call center are not calling without searching the FAQ. In fact, many users search for the phone number of the call center on the Internet and make a call. I just haven't been able to find the answer to what I don't understand or what I want to ask in the FAQ. (Mr. Rakusai)

Helpfeel not only lowers operating costs for service providers, but also improves user satisfaction. FAQs guided by Helpfeel can be created by crawling existing sites, but Nota also provides FAQ creation consulting to make it easier for users to find accurate answers.

I thought that banks and EC sites would be compatible, but looking at the names of companies that can be announced among the current 40 user companies, Iyo Bank, 17LIVE, Yahoo (PayPay flea market), AHB, Net Protections, etc. DeNA, White Plus, Mirativ, Minna no Market, HENNGE, Recruit, BellFace, Money Design, Newton, Persol Tempstaff, Shiroka, and more.

The demand for call centers is increasing due to the impact of the new coronavirus, and the current situation that it is becoming difficult to secure human resources for call centers is also a tailwind for Helpfeel. In the startup world, B2B SaaS is one of the big trends, but if Helpfeel can enhance the essential inquiry function along with customer success, it will greatly contribute to the scale of the service.