CRM startup Kustomer.com raises $26 million to modernize customer experience

Kustomer.com, the modern CRM platform for customer experience, service, and support, has raised $26 million in a Series B financing round to expand its platform and focus on intelligence, integrations, and enterprise capabilities as it continues to take on larger opportunities.

The latest round was led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from Series A investors Canaan Partners, Boldstart Ventures, and Social Leverage. Cisco Investments also joined as a new strategic investor. The latest financing brings its total funding to $38.5 million. In addition, the company also announced that Tomasz Tunguz, Partner at Redpoint Ventures, will join Kustomer’s Board of Directors to further propel the company’s goal of transforming the customer service industry.

Kustomer will broaden its capabilities starting with engagement. The company anticipates doubling its team within the next twelve months by expanding both domestically and internationally. Kustomer aims to enable all companies to provide memorable experiences by becoming customer-centric.

Founded in 2015 by a team of industry veterans, Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel, who know the space like the back of their hands. They have built some amazing companies in the past and have sold 5 companies to some of the biggest names in the business. The New York City-based Kustomer.com is the first platform built around the customer, bringing together everything you need to serve your customers better in one easy-to-use place.

Kustomer is the modern platform for customer experience, service, and support that focuses on customers, not tickets, enabling companies to know everything about every customer to drive informed actions. Used by industry leaders such as Ring, Glossier, and Rent the Runway, Kustomer provides businesses with a full view of every customer by unifying all relevant data, interaction history, apps, and systems.

As the digital age continues to bring customer behavior changes, the business processes that handle customer data need to adapt accordingly in order to exceed customer expectations. The only way companies and brands can differentiate in the direct-to-consumer age is with a full view of the customer, enabled by a platform approach to CX and service rather than siloed applications and traditional, outdated support ticketing systems.

“We have all experienced bad customer service. We saw there was a real need for a modern CRM platform that focuses on the customer, rather than a support ticket, in order to eliminate these negative experiences,” says Brad Birnbaum, CEO and Co-Founder of Kustomer. “Kustomer’s single customer timeline and intelligent workflow engine enable companies to personalize and automate complex use cases that take time and resources, allowing service teams to be more effective and productive. For example, if you order a dress for a friend’s wedding that is supposed to be delivered during a snowstorm, you may be a little worried it might not show up in time.

To add to the stress, you have to call support, wait in line, and provide all the personal information the company should already have in order to find out. With Kustomer, support agents already have your information and are able to proactively reach out to you on email or SMS to let you know about the delay, will provide an option to choose an alternate dress at no extra cost, and can update the shipping address as needed. Kustomer is providing modern service for the modern consumer.”

Kustomer’s CRM platform for customer experience enables service organizations to know everything about every customer. Kustomer empowers agents with real-time omnichannel capabilities and delivers personalized, memorable experiences at scale by integrating all business data and automating intelligent workflows, resulting in higher lifetime value.

Kustomer has experienced rapid growth since it was founded in 2015, including clients with thousands of service agents, some of which are industry disruptors themselves. Jamie Siminoff, Founder and CEO of Ring explains, “By switching to Kustomer, we were able to lower our overall service and customer experience costs, while also increasing our team member’s productivity. Kustomer aligns with our approach of providing exceptional customer experiences by leveraging their platform to better empower our teams, and in turn, our customers.”

“It is time for disruption in the customer support industry, and Kustomer is leading the way,” said Tomasz Tunguz, partner at Redpoint Ventures. “Kustomer has had impressive traction to date, and we are confident the world’s best B2C and B2B companies will be able to utilize the platform in order to develop meaningful relationships, experiences, and lifetime value for their customers. This is an exciting and forward-thinking platform for companies as well as their customers.”