INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The CRM industry is now estimated to be worth some $4 billion annually, and today a startup has announced a round of funding that it hopes
will help it take on one aspect of that lucrative pie, customer support
Kustomer, a startup out of New York that integrates a number of sources to give support staff a complete picture of a customer when he or
she contacts the company, has raised $26 million.
The funding, a series B, was led by Redpoint Ventures (notably, an early investor in
Zendesk, which Kustomer cites as a key competitor), with existing investors Canaan Partners, Boldstart Ventures, and Social Leverage also
participating.
Cisco Investments was also a part of this round as a strategic investor: Cisco (along with Avaya) is one of the world biggest
PBX equipment vendors, and customer support is one of the biggest users of this equipment, but the segment is also under pressure as more
companies move these services to the cloud (and consider alternative options)
Potentially, you could see how Cisco might want to partner with Kustomer to provide more services on top of its existing equipment, and
potentially as a standalone service — although for now the two have yet to announce any actual partnerships.
Given that Kustomer has been
approached already for potential acquisitions, you could see how the Ciscos of the world might be one possible category of buyers.
Kustomer
is not discussing valuation but it has raised a total of $38.5 million
Kustomer customers include brands in fashion, e-commerce and other sectors that provide customer support on products on a regular basis,
such as Ring, Modsy, Glossier, Smug Mug and more.
When we last wrote about Kustomer, when it raised $12.5 millionin 2016, the company
mission was to effectively turn anyone at a company into a customer service rep — the idea being that some issues are better answered by
specific people, and a CRM platform for all employees to engage could help them fill that need.
Today, Brad Birnbaum, the co-founder and
CEO, says that this concept has evolved
He said that &half of its business model still involves the idea of everyone being on the platform.& For example, an internal sales rep can
collaborate with someone in a company shipping department — &but the only person who can communicate with the customer is the full-fledged
&That is what the customers wanted so that they could better control the messaging.&
The collaboration, meanwhile, has taken an interesting
turn: it not just related to employees communicating better to develop a more complete picture of a customer and his/her history with the
company; but it about a company systems integrating better to give a more complete view to the reps
Integrations include data from e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Magento; voice and messaging platforms like Twilio, TalkDesk, Twitter
and Facebook Messenger; feedback tools like Nicereply; analytics services like Looker, Snowflake, Jira and Redshift; and Slack.
Birnbaum
previously founded and sold Assistly to Salesforce, which turned it into Desk.com — (his co-founder in Kustomer, Jeremy Suriel, was
Assistly chief architect), and between that and Kustomer he also had a go at building out Airtime, Sean Parker social startup
Kustomer, he says, is not only competing against Salesforce but perhaps even more specifically Zendesk, in offering a new take on customer
support.
Zendesk, he said, had really figured out how to make customer support ticketing work efficiently, &but they don&t understand the
customer at all.&
&We are a much more modern solution in how we see the world,& he continued
&No one does omni-channel customer service properly, where you can see a single threaded conversation speaking to all of a customer
points.&
Going forward, Kustomer will be using the funding to expand its platform with more capabilities, and some of its own automations
and insights (rather than those provided by way of integrations)
This will also see the company expand into other kinds of services adjacent to taking inbound customer requests, such as reaching out to the
customers, potentially to seel to them
&We plan to go broadly with engagement as an example,& Birnbaum said
&We already know everything about you so if we see you on a website, we can proactively reach out to you and engage you.&
&It is time for
disruption in customer support industry, andKustomeris leading the way,& said Tomasz Tunguz, partner at Redpoint Ventures, in a statement
&Kustomerhas had impressive traction to date, and we are confident the world best B2C and B2B companies will be able to utilize the platform
in order to develop meaningful relationships, experiences, and lifetime value for their customers
This is an exciting and forward-thinking platform for companies as well as their customers.&
