Gladly raises $36 million to simplify customer service across calls, social media, and emails

Gladly, which provides software to help businesses deliver better customer service, announced today funding of $36 million, led by GGV Capital. Companies use Gladly to interact with their customers across voice, email, SMS, chat, and social media.

“Legacy products, including the leading cloud products, like Salesforce and Zendesk, are all centered around tickets and cases, and they tend to silo the conversations inside of individual channels,” wrote Gladly’s cofounder and CEO, Joseph Ansanelli, in an email to VentureBeat. “So, a single phone call can kick off the creation of a new case number, and if a customer decides to then email, text, or tweet, a new case or ticket gets created for each and every subsequent communication.”

Gladly wants to centralize all communications onto one messaging interface. Ansanelli said the startup is currently working with consumer brands in retail, travel, and hospitality, but declined to name specific customers.

The software as a service (SaaS) subscription license is priced according to the number of active users — anyone in the company can participate in customer service, but those actively responding to customers (greater than 20 hours per month) pay $120 per user per month, which includes all channels.

The San Francisco-based startup was incubated at Greylock Partners in 2015. Incidentally, Ansanelli is also a partner at Greylock. This seems to be common thread, as Aneel Bhusri, who is a partner at the firm, is the cofounder and CEO of Workday, which was also incubated at Greylock.

“Greylock has a long track record of incubating companies and ensuring appropriate transparency with all its investors,” wrote Ansanelli. “And to ensure appropriate oversight, Jerry Chen, a Greylock partner, also serves on the board of Gladly.”

Greylock Partners and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), both existing investors of Gladly, joined GGV Capital in today’s round. The new money will be used to bring the product to market and add new customers.

Founded in 2015, Gladly has raised a total of $63 million to date and currently has 50 employees.