DEMO: Start chatting with customers with Workface

Workface is one of 53 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2011 event taking place this week in Palm Desert, Calif. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Workface, which provides an online service that helps companies interact with their customers with text- and video-chat services, is launching today at the DEMO Spring 2011 conference.

Workface gives employees at a company additional ways to interact with their customers. The software adds a toolbar to websites that shows how many sales associates are available and lets customers interact with them directly by chatting with them or viewing profiles. The software also gives companies some analytical tools to figure out which strategies for interacting with customers are working.

The company also has mobile-chat applications that lets employees chat with potential customers through a mobile device. The application is available for Apple devices and phones running on BlackBerry and Android mobile operating systems. Sales associates can also start video chats from their mobile devices if they have a front-facing camera, similar to Apple’s consumer-oriented FaceTime application.

Customer support for the service is hands-off as well, since the service is run on remote servers — or cloud-based servers. The software costs $25 per user per month, and any technical woes are handled by Workface. So companies interested in the software don’t have to hire additional IT professionals to handle any software woes that crop up.

Workface has raised $1.9 million to date from the founders, angel investors and Arthur Ventures. The Minneapolis, Minn.-based company was founded in 2007 and has 5 full-time employees, as well as some contract workers. The company is led by Leif Larson, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin’s business school. He was formerly the CEO of Kiosk.