CX Automation Company Directly Secures $11 Million

By Annie Baker • May 26, 2020
  • Directly, a leader in customer experience automation, announced it raised $11 million in new funding

Directly, a leader in customer experience automation, announced it raised $11 million in new funding — which expanded the $20 million strategic investment announced in January. This brought the total funding round to $31 million.

New investors Triangle Peak Partners and Toba Capital joined previously announced investors Samsung NEXT, Industry Ventures, Microsoft’s M12 Ventures, True Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Northgate in the round.

Directly is known for making customer support operations more resilient. And companies automate and resolve support issues within the IVR, email, web, live chat, and messaging channels using –the Directly platform. This platform provides insights into customer conversations, automates common support issues, and engages community experts to resolve customer issues more reliably at scale. Plus Directly customers are able to reduce customer contacts up to 80%, boost customer satisfaction by up to 20%, and save millions per year.

Along with this round of funding, Directly is introducing a partner ecosystem and robust APIs to help customer support leaders seamlessly access the benefits of its platform. And the first secured partnerships are with leading virtual agent companies Meya, Percept.ai, and SmartAction. As part of the program, Directly is granting companies access to the power of its expert network. This network and operating model are what enables Directly to offer customer support to leading global enterprises like Microsoft, Samsung, and Airbnb.

Key Quotes:

“Directly has established itself as a true leader in helping customers thrive during these turbulent economic times,” said Tyler Peterson, Partner at Triangle Peak Partners. “There is little doubt that automation will play a tremendous role in the future of customer support, but Directly is realizing that potential today. Their platform enables businesses to strike just the right balance between automation and human support, helping them adopt AI-powered solutions in a way that is practical, accessible, and demonstrably effective.”

“The team at Directly have quickly proven to be trusted and invaluable partners,” said Erik Kalviainen, CEO at Meya. “As a result of our collaboration, Meya is now able to take advantage of a whole new set of capabilities that will enable us to deliver automated solutions both faster and with higher resolution rates, without customers needing to deploy significant internal resources. That’s a powerful advantage at a time when scale and efficiency are key to any successful customer support operation.”

“At its core, our business is about helping customer support leaders resolve customer issues with the right mix of automation and human support,” said Directly CEO Mike de la Cruz. “It’s one thing to deliver a great product today, but we’re committed to ensuring that our customers have the solutions they need over the long term. That means constantly investing in our platform and expanding our capabilities, so that we can keep up with the rapid pace of technological change and an unpredictable economic landscape. These new partnerships and this latest expansion of our recent funding round have positioned us to do just that. We’re excited to be collaborating with our new partners, and very thankful to all of our investors for their support.”