20 Notable Customer Experience Companies & Startups (2024)
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Business leaders agree that customer experience—the high-level view of a customer’s relationship with a business based on every touchpoint they’ve ever had—is essential.
But statistics show that consumers see the situation differently.
Recent findings from Merkle showed that 86% of surveyed businesses felt they were providing a successful, complete customer experience. And just 35% of customers saw businesses’ advertising and marketing tactics as relevant and sufficient.
Given this apparent divide between the intentions of businesses and the true feelings of consumers, modern companies may need to re-evaluate their own customer experience. In this article, we present 20 trending startups that aim to help businesses with CX problems improve their relationship with their customers.
1. Aisera
5-year search growth: 243%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: Palo Alto, California
Funding: $164.4M (Series D)
What they do: Aisera is a generative AI customer service platform for enterprise companies. Their suite of features includes various AI tools to help businesses automate repetitive tasks for help desk employees to improve customer satisfaction scores. Aisera currently works with hundreds of customers, including Zoom, Snowflake, McAfee, and many others.
2. Planhat
5-year search growth: 335%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Funding: $50M (Series A)
What they do: Planhat provides insights on how to improve UX using customer usage data. The software has helped companies increase their customer retention by up to 10%. Another startup reports increasing their NPS from 74 to 78 and improving their response rate from 38% to 54% after using Planhat. The platform has a 4.7/5 average rating from 175 reviews on G2. Planhat forecasts it will reach approximately $90K MRR this year.
3. ChurnZero
5-year search growth: 53%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: Washington, D.C.
Funding: $34.5M (Series B)
What they do: ChurnZero arms business with the information and tools needed to combat customer attrition or churn. The company, founded by previous Cision (formerly Vocus) co-workers You Mon Tsang and Mark Heys, has raised roughly $35M total, with a 2021 Series B funding round bringing in $25M from JMI Equity, Baird Capital, and other investors.
4. MadKudu
5-year search growth: -43%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Mountain View, California
Funding: $27.1M (Series A)
What they do: MadKudu works to elevate the customer journey for B2B companies through better lead scoring. In 2020, the company, which is leveraged by businesses like Intercom and Gusto, highlighted their over $5M Series A funding round, the growth of their board of directors and advisory board, and their relaunched website.
5. Meya
5-year search growth: 69%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2015
Location: Ontario, Canada
Funding: $1M (Seed)
What they do: Meya is a platform used by companies to create support bots and improve customer experience. Google, Playstation, ESPN, and more companies use Meya’s platform to develop white-labeled applications to streamline many types of customer processes, from upsells to returns. The startup was founded by University of Waterloo graduates Erik Kalvianen and Amanie Ismail in 2015.
6. MaestroQA
5-year search growth: 0%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2013
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $31.5M (Series A)
What they do: MaestroQA is a customer experience startup that aims to deliver companies in-depth knowledge about their customer success team performance. The platform, which integrates with other common business tools such as Zendesk, Intercom, and Salesforce, was founded by Vasu Prathipati and Harrison Hunter after two unsuccessful marketing startups: Adtrib and MaestroIQ.
7. Raydiant
5-year search growth: 4,500%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2017
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $70.2M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Raydiant is a digital signage startup focused on helping companies make the most of the in-person experience of their business. They boast a technology solution that is both easy to set up and scale. The company, previously known as Mira, announced a $7M funding round in late 2019 that included 8VC, Bloomberg Beta, and other investors.
8. AfterShip
5-year search growth: -26%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2012
Location: Singapore, Singapore
Funding: $69M (Series B)
What they do: AfterShip is a customer experience company focused on bettering the consumer impression of ecommerce. The company, founded in 2012, only recently brought on sales staff after seeing years of success through smart business partnerships and referrals. In Q2 2021, the company announced a sizable $66M Series B funding round.
9. Userlytics
5-year search growth: 41%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2009
Location: Miami, Florida
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Userlytics is a remote user testing platform. Specifically, it’s designed to help companies run user experience studies such as usability tests, diary studies, tree testing, and card sorting. The platform currently works with over 1,000 companies, including Google, Mircosoft and Philips. The startup is projecting to reach approximately $5.2M in revenue this year, representing a 15% YoY growth (Pitchbook).
10. Threekit
5-year search growth: -27%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2005
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Funding: $65M (Series B)
What they do: Threekit is a platform designed to improve the ecommerce shopping experience by allowing brands to easily create true-to-life 3D product images to include in online listings. Through this technology, sellers have seen as high as a 40% conversion increase. Ben Houston, founder and CTO of Threekit, previously worked in the film industry developing visual effects used in movies like Poseidon, Superman Returns, and Avatar.
11. Surfly
5-year search growth: 50%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2012
Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Funding: $3.8M (Non-equity Assistance)
What they do: Surfly offers a solution to improve customer support interactions with easier screen sharing. The remote co-browsing software helps support reps, sales professionals, and consultants connect quickly and easily with their customers' needs. According to founder/CEO Nicholas Piël, he started the company after his own on-the-job experience with the difficulties involved in remote tech support.
12. Chattermill
5-year search growth: -16%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: London, England
Funding: $34.8M (Series B)
What they do: Chattermill is a customer experience platform designed to give companies a holistic view of disparate pieces of customer feedback that they can use to better understand and serve their customers. The startup raised $8M in a Series A funding round in early 2020. Investors included DN Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, and Matt Price, SVP of Zendesk.
13. Moesif
5-year search growth: -34%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2017
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $15.5M (Series A)
What they do: Moesif helps API developers improve their customer experience by gaining insights into how customers are leveraging their API. According to Derric Gilling, CEO and one of the founders of Moesif, the platform is essentially like Google Analytics for APIs. In early 2019, Moesif announced a seed funding round amounting to $3.5M with contributions from Merus Capital, Heavybit, and Zach Coelius.
14. Goodays
5-year search growth: -6%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2012
Location: Lomme, France
Funding: $20.1M (Series B)
What they do: Goodays is a customer experience tech startup that simplifies customer feedback for retail. Through the platform, stores are able to connect with customers and act on feedback. Both local store locations and headquarters can also benefit from a holistic view of customer experience insights. Founders Nicolas Hammer and Thibault Carlier started the company to help retail businesses keep up with the changing times and needs of customers.
15. Narvar
5-year search growth: 15%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2012
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $64M (Series C)
What they do: Narvar is a software company that helps businesses provide customers with a better experience post-purchase, from improved communication to more streamlined returns and repeat purchases. Their end goal is to assist companies in creating satisfied repeat customers. Since its founding in 2012, Narvar has helped over 1100 companies influence more than 125M customers worldwide.
16. Poly.ai
5-year search growth: 667%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: London, England
Funding: $116M (Series C)
What they do: Poly is a software startup that provides businesses with AI voice assistants to automate customer service. The company uses proprietary NLU models, speech synthesis, retrieval, and generative AI models to deliver natural, highly engaging, complex voice assistants. After the company's latest $50 million Series C funding round, they announced they currently support 100 enterprise customers (FedEx, Caesars, Marriott, etc.).
17. QuestionPro
5-year search growth: 92%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2002
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: Undisclosed (Non-equity Assistance)
What they do: QuestionPro provides a web-based survey platform that helps businesses gather information to inform their business practices. The company was founded by Vivek Bhaskaran, now the company’s CEO, who holds a computer engineering degree from Brigham Young University and sits on the board of several additional technology startups, including IdeaScale, TryMyUi, and LanderApp.
18. Timepoints
5-year search growth: 81%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2013
Location: Santiago, Chile
Funding: $40K (Seed)
What they do: Timepoints is a Chile-based survey company that helps companies gather and act on customer feedback. For companies interested in customer retention, Timepoints claims to help them easily build surveys and collect data in real-time for faster issue resolution. According to their blog, the company possesses the Woman Company Seal (Sello Empresa Mujer), which identifies female-driven businesses that supply services to the government.
19. parcelLab
5-year search growth: -16%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Funding: $112.1M (Series C)
What they do: parcelLab seeks to help brands provide their customers with an engaging, optimized experience at all sales touchpoints, from package tracking to returns. Like many companies focused on improving the post-sales process, a key objective of parcelLab’s is helping companies retain their existing customers. The European-based company was founded by Julian Krenge and Tobias Buxhoidt and is using a recent $112M funding round to further its expansion into the United States market.
20. Directly
5-year search growth: 89%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2011
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $66.8M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Directly improves customer experience through artificial intelligence technology. The San Francisco-based startup works with Microsoft, Airbnb, and others and has been financed by Samsung NEXT, Industry Ventures, and M12 Ventures from Microsoft, to name a few investors. The company was named #340 on Forbes Magazine’s 2021 list of “Best Startup Employers.”
Conclusion
When reviewing these customer experience startups, clear themes stand out.
First, several of these startups focus on supplying companies with crucial customer and company data to help them make smarter business decisions.
Second, some of these companies have realized the benefits of harnessing artificial intelligence to create chatbot software.
Lastly, the importance of the post-purchase experience for ecommerce customers is a recurring theme, with several startups focused on this exact step of the customer journey.
Despite the differences in these companies’ offerings, they are all still linked through their focus on helping businesses understand, satisfy, and retain their customers.
