Sparkcentral,
the enterprise customer engagement platform for real-time customer
service, today announced it has raised $12M in a Series B funding round.
The round was led by Split Rock Partners with participation from
existing investor Sigma West. Split Rock will also gain a board seat as
part of the funding deal.
Today’s customers expect instant service and recognition from
enterprises, on the device and channel of their choice. By providing an
efficient workflow for resolving even the most complex customer issues,
Sparkcentral enables enterprise support teams to build a trusted
relationship with every single customer.
Since raising its Series A in 2013, the company emerged as a market
leader for social media customer support software, winning customers
including T-Mobile, Delta Air Lines, Netflix, Dropbox, Uber and Sears.
Last quarter alone, Sparkcentral grew by 60% and it plans to use the
funding to expand and hire across all departments, particularly
engineering, sales and marketing.
“Our vision is to shape the future of the customer experience, and this
funding is a strong vote of confidence by enterprise software investors
whose values strongly align with our own,” said Sparkcentral Co-founder
and CEO Davy Kestens. “The customer support industry urgently needs
better solutions, and the faster we work to perfect our customer
engagement platform, the more enterprises will be able to provide
trusted, consistent and delightful customer experiences.”
Split Rock Partners, Sparkcentral’s newest investor, has a strong track
record with enterprise software companies, including Intacct, BlueKai,
Demandbase and InsideView.
“Today’s customers are in control and enterprises are struggling to keep
up. Legacy players are not architected to serve customers in the new
era, and Sparkcentral is filling the gap by building solutions that
enable enterprises to deliver customer experiences on the customers’
terms,” said Jim Simons, managing director at Split Rock Partners, who
will be joining the Sparkcentral board of directors.
Sparkcentral fits squarely into what Gartner refers to as the Customer
Engagement Center (CEC), which extends into CRM to reflect the new
multichannel and increasingly digital forms of engagement: “The goal of
the CEC is not only to provide reactive service to customers as they
move among communications channels — including social media — while
retaining the customers’ context, but also to deliver the appropriate
business rule to determine the next best action, information or process
with which to engage the customers.”
About Sparkcentral
In an era of empowered, hyperconnected customers, Sparkcentral is the
only CRM platform for enterprises that unifies social, mobile, cloud and
contextual data to proactively deliver personalized and engaging
customer experiences. Customer service teams use our software to
efficiently handle large amounts of customer inquiries in a fast and
structured manner. Sparkcentral’s client roster includes Delta Air
Lines, Netflix, Dropbox, Uber, Sears and T-Mobile. For more information,
visit www.sparkcentral.com.
About Split Rock Partners
Split Rock Partners, with offices in Minneapolis and Menlo Park, invests
in leading software and Internet services companies. Since 2005, Split
Rock has raised $575 million over two funds. Split Rock supports
exceptional teams across all stages of company development with flexible
capital spanning both primary and secondary investments. Representative
companies backed by Split Rock’s team include Acquia, Black Duck
Software, BlueKai, Code42, Compete, Demandbase, eBureau, HireRight,
InsideView, Intacct, Janrain, LowerMyBills, MyNewPlace, QuinStreet
(Nasdaq: QNST), Snagajob, SPS Commerce (Nasdaq: SPSC) and Vormetric.
Additional information about the firm can be found at www.splitrock.com.
Copyright Business Wire 2015