Kustomer, the enterprise customer service platform, today announced its Series E round of funding of $60 million,  which is their 4th round of funding in 18 months to total $173.5 million. New investor Coatue led the round along with returning investors Battery Ventures and Tiger Global Management.

Kustomer has been taking on brands like Salesforce and Zendesk as it becomes one of the fastest-growing companies in NY.

In May, we had an exclusive interview with CEO Brad Birnbaum where he said the following:

We are like Salesforce but 20 years newer and 20 years more modern. Once a decade, every product needs to be reinvented.

This past October, we broke the news about the company adding AI and and ML functionality for the future of work – specifically, the newly announced KustomerIQ integrated machine learning models and other advanced AI capabilities. Coupled with the Kustomer platform’s data, workflow, and rules engines, it enables companies to provide smarter, automated customer experiences that are more personalized, efficient, and effortless. Some of the new features include:

• Automated Conversation Classification: Intelligently categorizes and classifies conversations using Machine Learning and attributes of the conversation and customer.
• Queues and Routing: Routes customers to the most appropriate agent using conversation classification, agent skills and overall team capacity to drive the machine learning model. As a result, KustomerIQ helps companies improve customer satisfaction, increase first call resolution and reduce wait and handle times.
• Customer Sentiment Analysis: Using Natural Language Processing, the Kustomer platform can read messages between customers and agents and quantify how a customer feels about a brand in real-time. Seeing customers’ sentiment helps agents empathize with customers in a digital medium, and thus determine the best way to communicate with them.
• Automatic Language Detection: Using Natural Language Processing, the Kustomer platform can automatically identify the language being used in a conversation and then route the customer to an agent that speaks the language. In addition, if a company has pre-written responses (shortcuts) set up in multiple languages, those responses will automatically switch to the language used by the customer to ensure a better experience for both customer and agent.
• Suggested Agent Shortcuts: Provide recommended pre-written responses to agents based on conversation and customer attributes to help agents immediately access the knowledge they need to resolve customer issues faster.
• Customer Self-Service: Automatically suggests help articles from a company’s knowledge base providing an immediate answer to a simple customer question without interacting with an agent, so customers get answers faster and agents can focus time on more complex customer inquiries. By giving a customer more self-service options it also lowers agent volumes and improves resolution and handle times.
• Workforce Management: Helps to predict future conversation volume and staffing needs based on historical and trend data of items, such as SLA attainment and seasonality. Can also assist in identifying training needs by providing insights into areas where an agent or agents are deficient.

“‘Putting Customers First’ is the most important core value we have internally at ThirdLove and our objective is to listen to, respect and delight our customers, always,” said David Spector, Co-Founder at ThirdLove. “Since we switched to Kustomer, ThirdLove’s Fit Stylists and team managers finally have the ability to meet the personalized needs of our customers, however they want to communicate with us and across every channel. Our teams are more efficient and better trained, and our customers are happier – nothing makes me more thankful as a founder!”

In addition, Kustomer has recently added three key executives. Gabe Larsen joined as VP, Marketing from XANT (Formerly InsideSales.com). Mike Chapin, formerly of Knewton, will serve as VP, General Counsel, and Secretary. Tanya Livingstone also joins Kustomer from Knewton as VP, People.  “As we look to the future and our next phase of growth, we are fortunate to have Gabe, Mike and Tanya join us. These three leaders will play a big role in scaling our business for success as we plan to double our headcount in the next twelve months,” says Birnbaum. “I look forward to working with these talented executives and welcome them to the Krew.”

Kustomer’s AI and ML capabilities more closely align it with the definition of the Future of Work – solutions integrating the best of human and AI/ML integration. It’s an exciting time for organizations looking to partake in a digital transformation to more effectively compete in the market.

Where do organizations go to learn even more? The world’s only Future of Work Expo (collocated with the ITEXPO #TechSuperShow) of course. Feb 12-14, 2020 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Join others with $8.5B+ in IT buying power who plan 2020 budgets! Including 3,000+ resellers!

A unique experience with a collocated SD-WAN Expo, AIOps Expo and MSP Expo…