Intercom Inc., a sales startup that enables companies to engage prospective customers automatically online, today announced that it has secured a hefty $125 million investment led by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.

The venture capital firm was joined by Alphabet Inc.’s GV private equity arm and a number of returning investors. Their cash infusion brings Intercom’s valuation to $1.275 billion, according to CNBC.

The San Francisco-based startup claim to fame, other than its newly obtained unicorn status, is a trio of sales automation services that focus on chat-based channels such as Facebook Messenger. The linchpin of the lineup is a product called Messages. It enables companies to create automated workflows for reaching out to leads with personalized promotions.

A software-as-a-service provider, for example, could configure the tool to identify when a new user’s trial is about to expire and send a message via the native interface offering an upgrade. An analytics dashboard displays open rates and other key engagement statistics to help brands identify what resonates with leads the most.

Messages is complemented by Inbox, Intercom’s second service, which allows salespeople to manage incoming requests from prospects. It features a shared view that lets team members collaborate on conversations, assign tasks and view key information about each contact. There’s also a chatbot called Operator for automating common interactions such as collecting a person’s shipping address.

Rounding out Intercom’s trio of offerings is a knowledge base tool called Articles. It allows businesses to publish answers to frequently recurring questions so that a customer or prospect struggling with a common issue can quickly find the solution on their own.

Between them, Intercom’s services are used by more than 25,000 companies worldwide. The startup claims to support about 500 million customer conversations every month.

The new funding will enable Intercom to continue expanding its reach. Eoghan McCabe, the startup’s chief executive, indicated in a blog post that one way his team plans to accomplish this is by building new artificial intelligence capabilities.

Image: Intercom