Commerce

Glia raises $20 million to unify voice, video, and chatbots


Multimodality is fast becoming the norm in the $350 billion customer service industry. According to research published last year by Vonage company NewVoiceMedia, three-quarters of customers prefer to have their queries handled by a live agent, while the remaining 25 percent favor chatbots and other self-service alternatives. A separate survey by Econsultancy found that 51 percent prefer live chat for the freedom it affords, and according to Zendesk, over 80 percent report that they’ve had questions satisfactorily answered via voice, email, and text messaging.

Glia (formerly SaleMove), a New York and Estonia startup cofounded by now-CEO Dan Michaeli, Barry Klein, Chris Rappley, Tahlia Sutton in 2014, aims to capitalize on the trend with an omnichannel customer service platform that supports text, phone calls, video chat, and more. It today announced that it has raised $20 million in series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from current investors Tola Capital, Wildcat Capital Management, and Grassy Creek, bringing its total raised to $29 million.

It’s been an eventful year for Glia, according to Michaeli. In 2018, the company saw annual recurring revenue grow 100 percent year-over-year across its customer base of financial services companies, and its workforce doubled globally. The funding, he says, will be used to expand Glia’s footprint further in the U.S. and Estonia, particularly on the product development, sales, marketing, and infrastructure side.

“Almost every interaction between businesses and customers today involves a screen, yet the main method of getting in touch is still an old-school phone call,” he added. “Over the next three to five years, the move from ‘phone-first’ to ‘digital-first’ communication will define the businesses that win customer experience in their category.”

Glia

Glia’s path to success was anything but straight and narrow. It launched in 2014 as a sort of ecommerce blend of Yelp and Match.com: a service that paired customers with restaurants and retailers that supported their political and social values. The traction Klein and cofounders Rappley and Sutton predicted, however — 21 million to 31 million active users — never materialized, necessitating a return to the drawing board.

The newly pivoted Glia matches customers with support staff rather than brands by marrying video with messaging and voice. Michaeli claims its chatbot framework — AI Mangement Platform — is a key differentiator; it integrates and tracks bots powered by IBM’s Watson, Amazon’s Lex, Google’s Dialogflow, and other natural dialogue backends, which managers can divvy up into teams.

Customers who opt for human help can participate in live video sessions via Glia, during which reps provide guided product tours and answer questions verbally or via text. Niftily, folks who dial in are assigned a unique ID that Glia uses to intelligently route them to the person with whom they last spoke.

No matter which medium customers choose in Glia, its CoBrowsing tool enables agents to walk them through apps and websites step-by-step with a virtual mouse cursor. Michaeli claims that for some clients, it (in tandem with the rest of Glia’s suite) lead to 20 percent faster issue reduction, a four times increase in application throughput, and 18 percent reduced average handle time.

“We are proud to partner with Glia to transform how businesses connect with customers,” said Insight Venture Partners’ Lonne Jaffe of today’s news, who plans to join Glia’s board of directors. “Glia’s innovative technology includes an elegant blend of … video chat, voice communications, and a machine learning-powered chatbot chassis that works across [platforms]. Glia is one of the shining stars of the New York City technology ecosystem, and we’re excited to get the chance to provide the team with the capital and scaling support needed to continue their rapid growth in 2019 and beyond.”

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