Exclusive
By Ian McConnell
A SCOTTISH company which uses artificial intelligence to provide businesses with “real-time” customer feedback insights is targeting annual turnover of £7million in the next three years.
Glasgow-based MyCustomerLens – which works with legal and other professional services clients including accountancy firms and consultants and launched its algorithm-based software in 2020 – says it is on track to deliver revenues of more than £300,000 this calendar year.
It expects to recruit up to 30 staff by 2026, taking on employees in roles including sales and customer experience, following its first funding round planned for later this year. It currently has only two employees.
READ MORE: Ministry of Silly Talk – Brexit reality after ‘huge strides’ claim
The company is led by data specialist Paul Roberts, who has a background in management consultancy and has worked in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
MyCustomerLens, which said it had “secured contracts with several high-profile clients”, was this week named as a regional winner in the TechNation Rising Stars competition, which showcases innovative and exciting technology start-ups across the UK.
Mr Roberts, who has worked for HSBC, Citibank, PricewaterhouseCoopers and SportEngland, owns MyCustomerLens jointly with chief technology officer Mike Evans. Mr Evans has client and consulting experience in cloud computing, software architecture, and application (app) development.
The company’s proprietary software aims to provide businesses with a competitive advantage, allowing them to plan and make informed decisions based on real-time information about how they are perceived by their clients.
Drawing on customer interviews, feedback forms, operational data and unsolicited verbal and email comments, MyCustomerLens's software uses AI to identify themes and trends and to create “heat maps” and “mood charts”, which record how firms and their services are viewed.
READ MORE: SNP Prestwick Airport backing pays off, with critics quieter
Mr Roberts said the pandemic was a “turning point” for MyCustomerLens – which was incorporated in 2017 – because legal and professional services firms no longer had feedback from face-to-face interaction with their clients.
While they were still able to attend virtual meetings, the sort of information they gleaned during informal discussions dried up, he noted.
Mr Roberts said: “Senior management needed to make new types of business decisions and they didn’t have a mechanism for collecting and sharing the feedback that each fee-earner was hearing, in a quick and meaningful way.”
READ MORE: Brexit: Lack of hope down to politicians as people wake up
Spotting a gap in the market, Mr Roberts and Mr Evans devised a platform that automatically gathers and updates customer feedback information, with the aim of providing senior partners with the “data input they need to produce client intelligence and actionable insights”.
Mr Roberts said: “Beforehand, the normal approach was for legal and other professional services firms to hire consultants to conduct [customer] research. This process could take several weeks, or months, by which time much of the information was already out of date.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here