Portugal-based Talkdesk is a cloud-based contact center software company that has raised $100 million in a new round of funding from Connecticut-based hedge fund Viking Global Investors. Existing investor DFJ also participated in this round of funding. Talkdesk CEO Tiago Paiva acknowledged that this round of funding valued the company at more than $1 billion, according to TechCrunch.
What does Talkdesk do? Talkdesk, a Contact Center as a Service provider, uses artificial intelligence to improve customer service for companies like IBM, Dropbox, Peloton, Stitch Fix, Square, The Scotts Company, Discovery Education and Avetta.
“If you survey our competitive landscape today, most of the products are going on 20 years or more in age. With our modern architecture, we are turning the contact center industry on its head,” said Paiva in a statement. “Today’s funding ensures that Talkdesk continues our momentum to lead change in this market and serve our current enterprise customers as well as the rapidly increasing number of global contact centers looking to benefit from a modern cloud platform.”
Customer service representatives will be able to track what products the callers are using, what their tastes are, and whether they filed a complaint before. This is especially important for brands that have millions of customers.
“Today’s digital-first customers expect immediate and personalized answers, yet the majority of companies have not yet adopted a flexible, cloud-native platform to enable this level of agility and service,” added DFJ partner Josh Stein. “We are pleased to continue investing in Talkdesk, which has grown into an enterprise company that is leading the transformation of the $40+ billion contact center market. We believe that 2019 will be the year that cloud-based contact centers become the rule, not the exception, and Talkdesk will lead the way.”
