While last year’s WhatsApp outage is still sending shivers down the spine of its 2 billion users, the same is also true for the millions of businesses now using it to connect with their customers. As we now know, messaging across all platforms is a new area from which many startups are emerging.
One of the most recent is Superchat, which is building an all-in-one messaging platform for small and medium-sized businesses to contact their customers. And these things are needed: According to some surveys, 78% of customers give up on a transaction because of a negative experience. And European companies lose €13 billion in revenues a year over bad customer service.
Superchat has now raised $15.6 million in a Series A round led by London-based VC Blossom Capital, with participation from 468 Capital. That means the startup has now raised a total of $18.8 million.
Alex Lim, managing partner at Blossom Capital, said: “Superchat has built a platform that empowers small and medium-sized businesses to leverage the benefits of digital channels and provide the very best service to even the most discerning customers. The founders and the team understand the unique pain points being felt by companies, many of which are still relying on email and phone calls despite the significant shift to digital seen in the wake of the pandemic.”
The startup says it pulls in conversations from WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Google Business, Telegram, web chat, email and SMS — into a single inbox for the business. By doing this companies get data insights into their customers, helping them boost sales etc. All team members can see and reply to messages.
Founded by Yilmaz Köknar and Mika Hally, the platform has largely worked for customers in Germany to date.
Köknar said: “Today’s customers want and expect to be able to contact businesses wherever, and whenever suits them… this can prove to be a logistical nightmare for the companies, and results in poor experiences for the customers. No one wins within the current status quo, but with Superchat, everyone does.”
Superchat is up against a number of well-funded players in this sphere, including Rake, Messagebird, Smooch and others, so it will be interesting to see how it fairs.
