According to Abinash Tripathy, CEO, Helpshift, the fresh flow of funds will be put to use in expanding the team across R&D, sales and marketing. Helpshift was co-founded by Baishampayan Ghose and Tripathy in 2010. It has its back office in India with about 60 engineers, while the US and Europe accounts for marketing and sales with 33 professionals.
Helpshift, which uses SaaS as a platform to operate, is in a quest to enhance its customer management solutions by providing Software Development Kits (SDK’s) to companies and build a chat bridge (read chatbots) between users of their mobile apps and their customer service teams.
Its mobile app chat business, claims the company, has been installed in over 1.3 billion devices worldwide, serving more than 300 million customers monthly. The client base enjoyed by the CRM provider includes Zynga, VirginMedia, Microsoft, WesternUnion, Flipboard, Shyp, Luxe and WordPress and gaming companies like Supercell, the maker of clash of clans.
Till date, customer support involves users e-mailing companies about their queries or looking up FAQ pages on websites but the customer engagement and support industry is ready to evolve, believes Abhinash Tripathy.
He said:
“Consumers are tired of waiting for support agents to get back to them, and companies are tired of staffing expensive support teams to answer common, or even predictable, problems in the first place. People want immediate help, wherever they are, especially when using mobile applications… This is the year we champion a new model of support, one that’s better for both consumers, as well as the companies serving them.”
Helpshift’s support suite includes:
Offerings like in-app FAQs, in-app chat, a full CRM ticketing system, in-app surveys and in-app features, making it easier for companies and enterprises to provide customer support experience on any device. Answers in turn to user queries will on a single dashboard are cloud sourced and given out on the ideal platform via a unified inbox in real time.
Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president, Microsoft Ventures stated, “Helpshift has been a great partner for Microsoft and our investment today represents our confidence in their messaging-based approach to customer service, as we hold a shared value of providing the seamless experience customers want.”
Apart from a basic free trial, the software can be availed at $185 per month based on the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Currently, the company offers three package options including a customizable enterprise package. All package options include solutions for in-app feedback, two-way messaging and review prompts.
Earlier in 2014, Helpshift raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital, Visionnaire Ventures and existing investors, which sums it up at $36.2 million in today’s date.
