Clarabridge scores $80M to evolve customer experience management

The customer may not always be right, but businesses today are falling over themselves to make sure it feels that way.

Take Clarabridge, for example, a company that has built an intelligent customer experience management (CEM) platform. Today Clarabridge is announcing that it has raised an additional $80 million in equity funding, led by Summit Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and Yuchun Lee.

That’s on top of a successful three-year period in which the company saw 150 percent revenue grwoth and recurring revenue growth of more than 250 percent. Clarabridge’s platform helps businesses act on what their customers are saying about them (the Voice of the Customer, in industry terms) across a wide variety of sources. It also helps organizations pay attention to what their employees are saying, which typically leads to better customer service.

Clarabridge’s customers include major brands like Walmart, Best Buy, and Dell. The company says it will use the funding to grow its global operations, product development, and employee headcount. It also plans to increase its marketing reach to better serve its customers.

If you’ve never worked for a large company (especially retailers), it’s easy to overlook the importance of customer experience management. All the technology in the world won’t help a mismanaged business treat its customers well, but those who can manage to tap into the insights from their customers properly have the ability to forge a stronger bond with them.