Today,New York City-based startup Teckst is announced the successful close of a $2.5 million seed round. The team plans to use the new funding injection to advance their growth and expansion into new markets. According to a statement, their seed round investors include Composite Capital, Gaingels, Kernel Capital, and Zelkova Ventures along with angels Walter Burr, Adam Press, Dan Porter, and Kevin Mahaffey.
From alerts to notifications, to web chat prompts and customer service calls, there are a lot of options to speak with your customers. Above all, as an organization, you need to be where your customers and users are, and use the platforms and services they prefer to communicate with. Although direct to consumer text messaging platforms are not a new concept, Teckst’s solution is intuitive and does not require coding.
“Texting is the optimal platform for customer service as it allows for service to happen when the customer wants it and on their terms,” said Teckst investor Jay Levy, Partner, Zelkova Ventures.
Founded by former Seamless Creative Director, Matt Tumbleson, and General Assembly leader, Ji Young Choi, the team is focused on reducing customer wait times and cutting out everyone’s most hated response system: pre-recorded voice messages.
“Today’s empowered consumers are mobile, messaging-centric and fickle and they expect to interact with businesses instantly in the same manner as they connect with friends and family,” said Teckst CEO and Founder Matt Tumbleson. “Businesses can no longer afford to rely on outdated customer service ways and our customers love that Teckst is built to integrate with every CRM system.”
Teckst currently integrates with some of the largest CRM systems such as Desk.com, Help Scout, Oracle, Salesforce Service Cloud, and SugarCRM. Among the early adopters of Teckst are BarkBox, JackThreads, Luxe, and Membox.
“Our audience is nearly 80% millennial men and over 50% of the time they are purchasing on mobile,” said Jason Rosser, Director of Customer Service at JackThreads. “Teckst allows JackThreads to easily communicate with our guys the way they actually shop — it’s a total home-run for us.”