Customer service startup SupportLogic just raised $12 million in a funding round backed by Sorenson Ventures

* Customer service startup SupportLogic just raised $12 million in a fundraising round backed by Sorenson Ventures and Sierra Ventures. * Founded in 2016, SupportLogic promises clients the "world's first intelligent support platform," using AI and natural language processing to extract data from customer queries. This can reduce churn, prevent complaint escalations, and help companies better understand customers' needs, SupportLogic claims. * The customer experience industry is predicted to be worth close to $15 billion globally by 2025. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. SupportLogic, the San Jose-based startup trying to revolutionize customer service through AI, just raised $12 million in a Series A funding round backed by Sorenson Ventures and Sierra Ventures. The firm promises clients the "world's first intelligent support platform," using AI and natural language processing to extract useful data from their online ticketing systems. This can reduce churn, prevent complaint escalations, and help companies better understand customers' needs, SupportLogic claims. SupportLogic says it has helped clients reduce operational costs by 35%, reduce escalations by up to 40%, and sped up the rate of customer queries being resolved by 25%. "Support datasets contain valuable insights about how customers feel about [companies'] products," said Krishna Raj Raja, founder and CEO of SupportLogic. "It's critical to extract signals from this dataset and foster collaboration between support, sales, customer success, and product teams." Ken Elefant, managing partner at Sorenson, which led the round, said that the rise of subscription services means "churn and customer retention is a top priority for organizations." "SupportLogic's unique approach to this space and the technology they have built to extract signals from existing systems really excited us," he said. The customer experience industry is predicted to be worth close to $15 billion globally by 2025, according to research from analysts at Markets and Markets. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Why Pikes Peak is the most dangerous racetrack in America
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PayPal parts with top advertising executive after shifting its marketing strategy during the pandemic

* PayPal's chief creative officer Steve Simpson, its top advertising executive, left the company after about a year. * The move came after PayPal shifted its marketing strategy during the coronavirus pandemic, placing less emphasis on the brand and more on catering to small businesses, said a source with direct knowledge of the marketing operation. * Simpson's departure followed that of CMO and former Apple executive Allison Johnson in May. Both "decided to leave PayPal" as the company streamlines its global marketing functions, according to a PayPal spokeswoman. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. PayPal's highest-ranking ad executive Steve Simpson left earlier this month after just over a year as part of a restructuring of its global marketing business. Simpson, who was chief creative officer, was hired to make high-minded ad campaigns to help PayPal stand out from competitors like Square, Stripe, and Apple Pay. But this strategy chan

Neighbor, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup that wants to be the Airbnb of self-storage, has started partnering with landlords to turn empty offices into spaces for people's stuff

* The Airbnb of self-storage, Neighbor, has seen a surge in demand as a result of the pandemic, according to CEO and cofounder Joseph Woodbury. * The company announced a partnership Tuesday with landlord and operator Bridgeton Holdings to fill vacant office space with self-storage in San Francisco and eventually across the country. * This comes as the office market has taken a big hit from the coronavirus pandemic. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The coronavirus has accelerated the trend of using under-utilized real estate for other purposes, like turning retail storefronts and parking lots into distribution hubs for e-commerce fulfillment and redeveloping malls into communities by adding residential units. One area of commercial real estate that's in high demand is self-storage. The average spend on construction of new facilities per year jumped to $5 billion in 2018 from $1 billion in 2015. With the coronavirus prompting moves, a likely trigger f

The machines USPS is removing from distribution centers can sort more than 36,000 pieces of mail per hour. Here's how they work.

* The United States Postal Service has been deactivating mail-sorting machines around the US ahead of the surge expected from mail-in voting this fall, reports say. * Each machine can sort up to 36,000 pieces of mail per hour. * The machines sort letters, postcards, and other mail by bar code. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Mail-sorting machines used by the United States Postal Service (USPS) have been dismantled and removed from distribution centers around the country, according to postal workers. They told Motherboard that at least 19 machines were removed without explanation. An internal USPS letter from June included a plan to remove hundreds of more mail-sorting machines this year. Postal Workers Union members and some Democratic politicians have expressed concerns about changes to the USPS under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor who started his position this summer. President Trump has attacked the USPS and claimed that voting

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