U.K.-based cloud contact center solutions provider NewVoiceMedia (News - Alert) recently secured $35 million in a Series C round of funding. The financing was led by new investor Bessemer Venture Partners and joined by existing shareholders Highland Capital Partners (News - Alert) Europe, Eden Ventures and Notion Capital. According to the company, the cash will be used to boost the company’s international growth and closely follows the opening of its new regional headquarters in North America and Asia Pacific.
According to industry analyst DMG Consulting, NewVoiceMedia is growing at more than twice the rate of the cloud contact center market, having doubled its personnel over the last year to meet increased demand for its technology.
Companies are increasingly turning to cloud-based contact center solutions for a number of reasons: the low start-up costs (cloud-based solutions require little up-front capital and can be paid for on a monthly subscription basis), the flexibility to grow or shrink the contact center as needed, the ability to use the solutions across multiple contact center locations and even with home-based agents, the broadened feature set, the ability for remote administration and the ability to shift IT and maintenance of the solution to someone else: usually the solution provider.
But it’s more than just these ease of use and flexibility features: it’s about data, say experts.
“In a world when CRM is becoming increasingly social, connection into internal data stores is no longer enough to provide excellence in customer service,” writes diginomica’s Phil Wainewright. “External data — especially from social media — is increasingly relevant and important in evaluating how best to route and resolve a call.”
NewVoiceMedia’s solution, which has about 10,000 customers all over the world, is popular for a many reasons, including its integration with Salesforce’s Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, and the company attributes its success, in part, to easy integration to outside data sources.
“People will expect to pick something as a source of data, click on it and say, right I want to route [calls] based on Foursquare, LinkedIn, Twitter (News - Alert), and not want to get a systems integrator in and wait six months,” said Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia.
This is the second round of funding the company has raised this year after a $26.3 million round in January led by Highland Capital Partners and MMC.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey