• Deep learning startup Chattermill finds actionable insights in customer feedback and conversations at scale; hyper-growth companies such as Transferwise, Zappos and Uber use the service to make customer-centric decisions

• Backing from DN Capital, Ventech, btov Partners and existing investors will power talent acquisition for data scientists, product designers, engineers and commercial team across the company’s offices in London and Berlin

Leading customer understanding platform, Chattermill has announced a US$8m Series A funding round. The capital will be used to expand the company’s offices in London and Berlin. The company will be actively recruiting engineers, data scientists, enterprise sales and marketing experts - their most recent senior hire is former Head of Research & Analytics at Sky Dr Aji Ghose who has joined as VP of Data and Research.

Co-founded by Mikhail Dubov and Dmitry Isupov in 2015 while at Entrepreneur First, Chattermill was born out of their frustration that it took weeks - sometimes months - for customer research to yield any quality insights which would largely be out of date by the time they reached decision-makers. Since then, Chattermill’s platform and its value have been recognised by numerous fast-growth clients such as HelloFresh, Uber, Deliveroo and Zappos. Additionally the company was recently selected to Tech Nation’s Upscale 2020 cohort and recognised by Forrester as a key vendor in their most recent Voice of the Customer industry report.

This round is led by DN Capital and supported by Ventech and btov Partners with participation from Silicon Valley Bank and notable angels including Matt Price, Senior Vice President at Zendesk, and Nilan Peiris, VP Growth at Transferwise. Existing investors Entrepreneur First, Avonmore Developments and 2be.lu have also joined the round. Price, who previously led Zendesk’s growth in EMEA, will also join Chattermill board as Non-Executive Director to advise the company through the next stage of growth.

The experience economy continues to revolutionise the way customers interact with businesses. Companies mastering this change create unique, sustainable competitive advantage, but the challenge is becoming increasingly hard. Digesting and extracting accurate insight from multiple touchpoints and data formats across the entire customer journey in real time is imperative to prioritise the specific parts of customer experience to work on.

This is where AI plays a crucial role in organisations. Analysing and interpreting meaning within every piece of customer feedback across different channels such as chat, customer support, surveys and social in real time enables companies to identify the key drivers of customer experience and make rapid changes to boost loyalty, advocacy and reduce churn risks. 

Chattermill unifies customer feedback and conversation channels and uses deep learning to interpret meaning within customer feedback, in real time. The platform assembles unique understanding models for each client based on a sample of its customer feedback as well as knowledge embedded in the engine after over four years of tuning. Through powerful reporting, intelligent alerting and automation the customer understanding platform enables teams to harness the insights generated in every business decision.

Transferwise started using Chattermill’s solution in 2017 when its high growth made it impossible for them to keep manually interpreting customer feedback. They needed a better way to quickly analyse high volumes of data across multiple languages. Since then, Chattermill has been used by over 200 people across multiple teams at Transferwise, enabling them to find insight hidden in customer feedback and make decisions that continuously deliver superior customer experience.

Nilan Peiris, VP Growth at Transferwise, said: “Chattermill enables our team to take customer insights deeper than ever before and focus on the key factors that make a difference to our users and drive our growth. I’ve seen first-hand the value a product like Chattermill’s can add to a company and that’s why I decided to invest in this round. The product is helping many businesses grow while making sure their customers get the best possible experience.”

Mikhail Dubov, CEO & Co-Founder of Chattermill, commented: “Our mission is to help every business become truly customer-focused. Every decision made at every level of the organisation should be taken with the customer in mind if teams want to win in today’s experience economy. This isn’t limited to Customer Experience departments, but should inform everyone across product, operations, marketing, and the leadership team.”

Chattermill easily integrates with feedback and conversational tools already used by companies - such as SurveyMonkey, Zendesk, Trustpilot or Salesforce - aggregating every piece of feedback such as surveys, reviews, support tickets and social media, for a thorough understanding of the customer experience. Chattermill’s deep learning engine allows finding multiple pieces of insight in a piece of feedback and the right sentiment for each one.

Dubov added: “The depth of analysis we deliver was previously extremely expensive and time-consuming meaning most companies missed out on critical insights on how to improve their customer experience. Today our solution is delivering detailed customer insights to hundreds of teams across the world in real time, and has already played a key part in improving customer experience for millions of customers of companies like Deliveroo, HelloFresh, Zappos, and Uber.”

The raise announced today is a combined figure from an initial $5.8m raise closed in 2019 and a subsequent $2m extension. This new round of investment comes on top of just over $1m secured in 2017 with the support of Entrepreneur First, Avonmore Developments and angel investors.

Guy Ward Thomas, Investment Manager at DN Capital, said: “Chattermill has built an amazing product that is already changing the way leading global brands are assessing their customer feedback. Chattermill is saving businesses' time and money, whilst delivering game-changing insights. I can't wait to see where this new funding round will take them.

Matt Clifford, Co-Founder and CEO at Entrepreneur First, said: “We’ve been following Mikhail and Dmitry since the early days of Chattermill. They are incredibly talented and have come such a long way since founding the company at Entrepreneur First back in 2015. Their product has proved its value and I’m sure this Series A will take the company to a whole different level.”