When it comes to figuring out how to keep customers happy, companies tend to rely on data about their customers’ experiences on their websites or mobile apps. While this is certainly useful, a Santa Barbara startup believes the most crucial information comes along when customers leave these platforms in favor of calling the business over the phone. To drive this point home, Invoca just raised $83 million for its call tracking solution.
The company announced a Series F raise on Tuesday led by Silver Lake Waterman, bringing its valuation to $1.1 billion. With $184 million in total venture funding to date, new unicorn Invoca is furthering its solution that helps companies collect actionable data from live phone calls.
“Invoca solves a critical problem for businesses — the broken customer experience,” Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca, told Built In via email. “Invoca’s technology enables revenue teams to better understand the end-to-end consumer buying experience and immediately act on the information consumers share via phone conversations.”
Invoca is a cloud-based platform offering AI-powered conversation intelligence tools to enterprise teams in marketing, sales, customer retention, e-commerce and customer experience. By collecting data from every sales call a company receives, Invoca aims to help teams understand and act immediately on the information their customers share with them during these conversations. It also recently introduced features for call center teams, including automated quality management, agent coaching and performance, call routing and conversational IVR.
The company counts brands within industries like automotive, telecom, healthcare, financial services and real estate among its customers. Names including AutoNation, Banner Health, DIRECTV, ORKIN and the Mayo Clinic actively use its solution.
“The platform provides actionable data from phone calls, all in real-time,” Johnson said. “This means that revenue teams can improve the customer experience based on the data, which in turn dramatically improves ROI and prevents customer churn and revenue loss. Our technology enables B2C brands to use data to drive strategy and business decisions that impact the bottom line.”
Invoca’s latest financing round follows a period of significant growth. As of February, the company recorded a more than 70 percent increase in revenue as well as a customer base of over 2,300 B2C brands. To date, Invoca surpasses more than $100 million in run-rate revenue. The company attributes part of this recent growth to the Covid-19 pandemic and its exposure to fundamental weaknesses in contact center operations, according to Johnson. Invoca jumped at the chance to help companies offer their customers a more personalized experience.
“While in-person experiences have returned, consumers have realized the power of the phone call — and they aren’t hanging up,” Johnson said. “Plus, when we factor in the labor shortage, we are now seeing multi-location chains and large scale businesses begin to use or even double down on contact centers so that workers can focus on in-person guests.”
Building on its recent success, the company has a range of investment plans with its hefty new capital raise. For starters, Invoca will fuel product innovation through development as well as acquisitions, as it did through its acquisition of DialogTech last May. This initiative includes making advancements to its new call center tech solutions. Invoca is also expanding its partnerships and distribution relationships with other contact center companies like Five9, which already integrates with Invoca’s solution.
Rounding out its investment agenda, Invoca plans to grow its platform’s reach. Currently serving enterprise customers within the U.S. and Canada, the company wants to broaden its scope and expand coverage into Europe, Mexico and South America.
As it does so, the company is also building out its team of almost 400 people by an additional 50 this year, according to Johnson. Invoca is hiring for roles spanning its engineering, sales, customer success and accounting and finance teams.
