Kustomer, a New York-based customer management platform for “the people-first enterprise,” has raised $35 million in Series C funding led by Battery Ventures. Including this round, Customer has raised a total of $73.5 million. And in conjunction with this funding round, Battery Ventures general partner Neeraj Agrawal is joining Kustomer’s board of directors.
Existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Canaan Partners, Boldstart Ventures, Social Leverage, and Cisco Investments also participated in this round. And with this funding round, Customer will accelerate its go-to-market strategy, expand internationally, and invest in its platform. Plus it will launch new products that will compete against companies like Salesforce, Oracle, and Zendesk.
Photo: Kustomer
“From early on, leading brands in the B2C and DTC segments were attracted to Kustomer because we provide a next-generation alternative to outdated technologies and a solution to an endless queue of tickets that’s weighing companies down and frustrating their agents and customers,” said Kustomer CEO Brad Birnbaum in a statement. “Kustomer’s first-of-its-kind data model and one, single timeline view of customer interactions and events have differentiated us from legacy solutions and are the basis for our 500% year-over-year growth.”
Kustomer’s rapid growth is attributed to the company’s ability to attract large companies with thousands of service agents due to their frustration with legacy solutions. Kustomer has doubled the size of its workforce in 2018 and the company is planning to more than double again in 2019.
“We’ve been closely following Kustomer’s impressive growth and see a large opportunity for the company to become one of the top players in this market—owing mainly to its powerful platform, experienced team and ability to execute on its vision,” added Agrawal. “We’re excited to leverage Battery’s global network and company-scaling expertise to partner with Brad and the rest of the Kustomer team to help the company expand further into the enterprise market.”
Some of the company’s customers include Ring, Rent The Runway, Slice, Sweetgreen, and UNTUCKit. UNTUCKit customer service director Michael Vroom said that they saw a 30-second decrease in handle time for voice interactions and 25% overall improvement in efficiency after switching to Customer from Desk.com. And Glovo’s Global Head of Live Operations Support Sergi Méndez Rodríguez said that the company saw increased efficiency and are constantly improving live support to their users in over 20 countries across the globe.
Kustomer is also announcing key senior leadership appointments including Amir Oren as VP of Finance (formerly of Talkdesk, Zendesk, and Dropbox), Nelly A. Rinot as VP of Marketing (formerly of NICE, RRD, and Radware), Alex Gadd as VP of Customer Experience (formerly of SugarCRM and Oracle). And Vikas Bhambri was promoted to SVP of Global Sales and Customer Experience (formerly of Oracle, LivePerson, and 8×8).
