Customer Service Start up "GripeO" Raises $200k Seed Round
Buffalo, NY (PRWEB) January 19, 2015 -- GripeO, a Website and Mobile Application Customer Service Platform and Z80Labs Incubator Business has announced the successful close of a $200,000 round of seed capital. The money will be used on marketing and development resources in service to a national roll out in 2015. The company launched in 2012 and has since developed a significant Consumer and Business following. By leveraging mobile, social media, and current web technologies, the company is seeking to position itself as the modern version of the Better Business Bureau, and a more useful version of Yelp.
Of the company's recent fundraising success, GripeO CEO Mike Klanac said, "I'm incredibly proud of the platform we've created and the team that has made it happen. Additional capital will allow us to bring our revenue generating toolset to businesses across the country and execute on our business plan. We intend to keep innovating and growing as a first to market "social care" entrant, with a keen eye toward serving our Business, Consumer, and Investor constituents. This is just the beginning for GripeO."
To gain success fundraising out of smaller market, Klanac said the following:
• Show, don't tell - Build an minimum viable product, talk to customers, and let people see what you're doing. It's about execution, not ideas.
• Get out there and meet people - People invest in great companies, but at the seed level, they also want to know the people who'll be driving the company forward. To do that, you need to build relationships, which often starts with networking, both in person, and virtually.
About GripeO: GripeO is a modern Customer Service Platform for Consumers and Businesses which uses mobile and social technologies to address growing frustration in how we provide companies feedback. Users submit feedback for any business from one consolidated app (GripeO) or website (GripeO.com), typically in under a minute. Verified businesses can respond to and analyze feedback. Unverified businesses are encouraged to verify and address the issue through social media encouragement, using GripeO. If feedback is completely ignored, it is offered as a highly qualified lead to competitors, in the Complaint Marketplace.
Additionally, verified businesses are offered tools to improve their help desk experience. Playing on the concept of complaint feedback actually being an incredible opportunity, the GripeO Social Lead generation toolkit cross references competitive keywords with hashtags like #badcustomerservice, follows them, and reports if the user follows back. This allows businesses to then reach out with highly qualified leads, at just the right time. GripeO's vision is to grow as a feedback aggregator by making it easier and more convenient to submit on one's own terms, while still guiding and shaping that feedback in a way that provides value to businesses. GripeO will continue to assess new ways to bring data into the platform, be it through new inputs like Website Widgets & Text Messaging, or data collection methods, like Scraping.
Michael Klanac, GripeO, http://www.gripeo.com, +1 716-562-6381, [email protected]
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