UPDATED 23:00 EST / JUNE 09 2015

NEWS

Talkdesk nabs $15M to spin up cloud-based call centers

The telephone might be rather old as far as technology standards go, but there’s no doubt it’s still one of our favorite ways to communicate with companies, especially when we require a fast response.

Which might explain when San Francisco-based Talkdesk Inc. with its browser-based call center software for sales, support and marketing has just scooped up $15 million in funding to help small and mid-size businesses set up cloud-based customer service centers.

The round was led by DFJ with participation from existing investor Storm Ventures, and takes TalkDesk’s total funding to $18.6 million. The company says it’ll use the cash to expand its product, design and engineering teams and boost marketing and customer support efforts.

What’s great about Talkdesk is that its platform can be setup in a matter of minutes, integrated with existing customer relationship management (CRM) and business tools. Even better, it doesn’t require any hardware to run, nor coding, downloads or even a telephone. Instead, all you need is a PC and a decent Internet connection.

Customers are quickly routed to the most appropriate agent, who can see a profile of the caller detailing their previous chats, calls, emails and support tickets. Once the call has finished, the details of that conversation are automatically saved in the user’s profile. The system can also forward details of missed calls, including customer’s messages if they leave any.

All in all, Talkdesk sounds like a pretty efficient and cost-effective way to set up a call center, and as the company’s CEO Tiago Paiva said to TechCrunch, while more customers are using email and chat for less pressing needs, there are times when talking to a real human being is highly desirable.

“You might call less often, but when you call you really need a problem solved,” Paiva said. “When you order something and the food isn’t there or something, you’re not going to expect to email and get a response in 24 hours. You want to call immediately.”

Talkdesk was founded in 2011 with just seven employees and launched its platform a year later. Since then, its grown considerably, and now has 70 employees and boasts around 2,000 customers so far, including Edmunds.com, Homejoy, and Weather.com among them. Its also seen revenues grow ten-fold year-over-year.

Talkdesk isn’t the only company attempting to modernize and simplify the call center. Rival firms include Five9, inContact and RingCentral, but Talkdesk maintains its solution is far easier to set up, with simple one-click integration for popular platforms like Desk.com, Salesforce and Zendesk.

Image credit: bykst via pixabay.com

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