Home Articles Influx.com raises $250,000 to businesses deliver better customer experiences

Influx.com raises $250,000 to businesses deliver better customer experiences

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You can expect an influx of good customer service in Australia soon.

Influx.com has just announced a $250,000 seed investment from 99designs Founder Mark Harbottle, angel investor Leni Mayo and the SitePoint Group. The investment is to help launch the business on a global scale..

Founded by Melbourne entrepreneur and former 99designs and Sitepoint developer Mikey De Wildt, Influx.com helps tech startups address the common challenge of delivering excellent customer service while trying to scale customer care resources in accordance with company growth.

The Influx.com solution provides a customer service team specifically for online companies. The service comes as an affordable flat-rate.

Influx.com: on a mission…

“When you create a new business in the tech space, you’re born global. All of a sudden you have customers around the world buying your product, using your service, but there’s no affordable global customer support team,” said De Wildt.

Influx.com manages the customer support functions for you, so business owners can focus on their product, and scaling their businesses. Traditional startup advice says stay close to your customer so you know what they want, however making the time to focus on other aspects of your business such as refining your product is just as important, failing to do so can be detrimental to your core business,” said De Wildt.

The idea for Influx.com came about when De Wildt found answering enquiries for his side project, WordPress Backup to Dropbox (a popular WordPress plugin), became a second full-time job. He searched for someone to handle a low volume of customer enquiries so he could focus on product improvement.

An idea born out of necessity

“I asked a few customer support services for quotes, but if you don’t have the volume they’re looking for, they don’t want to know you—they’re not startup friendly,” said De Wildt.

He also placed ads for a freelancer to work an hour a day but found it didn’t attract people up to servicing customers to his standards.

Influx operates with startups top-of-mind, regardless of where they are in their journey. The service provides weekly reports that include customer feedback, which helps build business intelligence – something a lean startup rarely has the resources in place to undertake otherwise.

Influx customer support services are currently available to Australian tech startups and online companies. The company plans to expand its services worldwide to cater for the global startup market.

A new entrant into a big marketplace

While this is not the first company to offer outsourced customer service functions, it is a native Australian entrant in a niche that has largely shifted offshore in recent years. And that makes Influx a curiosity.

“Influx is building a disruptive platform that has the potential to challenge the traditional customer service model,” said entrepreneur and Influx investor Mark Harbottle. “No longer do tech start ups have to struggle juggling customer service and scaling, Influx directly addresses this pain point with a cost effective, high quality and scalable solution,” Harbottle said.

(Image source: Bigstock)