New funding will accelerate innovation of Quiq’s Conversation Platform and expand the company’s market reach
Quiq, the AI-powered Conversational Platform that enables brands to engage customers on the most popular asynchronous text messaging channels, today announced it has closed a $25 million Series C funding round, which brings the company’s total funding to date to $47.5 million. Baird Capital led the Series C round, with additional participation from existing investors Venrock, Foundry Group and Next Frontier Capital. The new funding will be used to extend Quiq’s leadership position in Conversational AI and asynchronous messaging and to invest further in emerging Conversational Commerce solutions. Quiq will also expand its marketing and sales teams to address increasing demand from B2C enterprise brands, both in the U.S. and globally.
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Quiq, the AI-powered Conversational Platform that enables brands to engage customers on the most popular asynchronous text messaging channels
“Our business has doubled in the past year as we have broadened our solution to handle conversations occurring between brands and consumers across the entire customer lifecycle from pre-purchase to post-sale, both with human agents and conversational AI,” said Mike Myer, CEO and founder of Quiq. “Customers don’t want to make purchases or interact with customer service like they did even a year ago. Phone and email volumes continue to decline, replaced by text messaging. Innovative brands are engaging customers in conversation during a purchase journey to find the right product and help complete the purchase within the same conversation. Additionally, when the customer needs support later on, brands are available 24/7 with conversational AI that achieves high customer satisfaction scores. I am so proud of what we have developed so far in our journey to the next generation of customer engagement and I am excited to be able to use this funding to accelerate our progress.”
Quiq currently works with more than 200 leading brands across many industries — retail/e-commerce, consumer services, travel and hospitality, consumer finance and online gaming — demonstrating the applicability of the Quiq Conversational AI Platform to every B2C enterprise. By using Quiq’s CRM integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft, and Oracle, brands are able to utilize existing processes and customer data while modernizing the ways they communicate with their customers.
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Recently named one of the fastest growing companies in the Rocky Mountain region by Inc. Magazine, Quiq’s approach to landing large enterprises demonstrates the value of Quiq’s platform and the power of messaging — an approach that has led to expansions of three to 70 times the value of the initial engagement.
Additionally, overall conversation volume on the Quiq platform has increased six-fold since early 2020 and conversations per client have increased by 300%. Quiq has developed strong strategic alliances with business process outsourcing (BPO) and system integrators (SIs), contact center consultants and chatbot vendors, with 40% of new business now driven from alliance partners.
The investment in Quiq highlights the “Consumerization of the Enterprise,” a core thesis of Baird Capital’s technology investments and the firm’s history with related customer experience and marketing technology platforms. “Quiq is not just changing how businesses interact with their customers; they are transforming Customer Experience from something static to something dynamic that makes customers feel valued and heard,” said Benedict Rocchio, Partner at Baird Capital. “Baird Capital is excited to be part of this transformation and to watch the Quiq footprint grow through this partnership.”
“Consumers in the US are increasingly comfortable using conversational interfaces — including chat and messaging — to get information, communicate with brands, and even make purchases,” according to a March 2022 report by analysts at Forrester Research. Additionally, according to Forrester’s 2021 Moments Map, “50% of U.S. online adults use chat to make purchases, and the level of use only increases among younger demographics, peaking with 25- to 34-year-olds at 62%. Beyond a desire to shop from the convenience of a device, consumers are also turning to chat to receive real-time clarifications on questions they may have around the product, shipping, and more.”