Backed by Cresta founders, Trove’s AI wants to make surveys fun again

Surveys have change into an integral a part of many features of our lives, however most of them are tedious, resulting in ineffective responses and actions. Dinghan Shen and Yuan Xue, two software program engineers working in Silicon Valley, acknowledged a possibility to leverage the breakthroughs introduced by massive language fashions to make surveys extra empathetic and interesting.

Round six months in the past, Shen and Xue, who had been buddies since highschool, began Trove AI, a SaaS platform that lets customers create conversational surveys powered by GPT-4 and its personal fine-tuned fashions. The thought has obtained backing already. Zayd Enam and Tim Shi, co-founders of Shen’s former employer Cresta, an a16z-backed unicorn empowering contact heart brokers with AI, invested an undisclosed quantity within the startup’s pre-seed funding.

Launched six weeks in the past, Trove’s first model has amassed over 1,000 customers who’re largely small and medium-sized companies from world wide. “Dozens of” them have despatched surveys not less than twice since. Nonetheless free to make use of, the platform has attracted a variety of customers, together with a London-based spa, a Ok-12 college in Boston, and a journey company targeted on Latin America.

Making use of conversational AI to surveys seems to be a low-hanging fruit on this period of ChatGPT frenzy. Enterprise-focused survey giant Qualtrics has adopted AI throughout its line of buyer and worker suggestions merchandise. SurveyMonkey, the go-to survey supplier for SMBs, is using AI to automate the creation course of.

To distinguish, Trove goals to finally change into a “buyer and worker expertise administration platform” for firms of all sizes, Shen mentioned. The product is actually expertise administration round clients, workers, merchandise, and extra. Following the recent management saga of OpenAI that briefly disrupted its chatbot service, functions that construct on high of ChatGPT, or “wrapper products,” are rethinking their heavy dependence on third-party APIs.

“We’re 80% SaaS and 20% AI,” Shen informed TechCrunch in an interview. As such, he reckoned Trove affords ample worth along with its options powered by OpenAI. “We goal to do the whole lot from survey creation, response, analytics, ticket creation to CRM integration… It’s an AI-generated suggestions loop.”

CRM integration, particularly, would permit Trove to create extremely custom-made surveys upon which the system can create a ticket mechanically and ship a personalised follow-up e-mail to thank the client for giving suggestions.

“Essentially, we’re rethinking the expertise administration workflows from scratch within the context of the highly effective massive language mannequin capabilities right now,” mentioned the founder.