In an increasingly connected and social media dominated world, customer service is quickly becoming the key differentiator among e-commerce brands. Consistent, reliable and rapid-fire customer service is a necessary element of any successful business. According to a 2018 Customer Service Benchmark Report, 62% of companies don't respond to customer inquiries in a timely manner and a majority of those companies have less than 100 employees. But in the booming e-commerce and startup community, most businesses aren't served by existing outsourced customer service solutions or have the bandwidth and budget for in-house teams. Enter Simplr.

Announcing today a Series A round, Simplr is a customer service solutions initiative incubated and funded by Asurion, a global leader in customer service with over 300 million customers, designed to provide high growth e-commerce businesses with affordable, flexible and on-demand U.S. based customer service. The company has raised $8 million from Asurion and its private equity backers.

The premise behind Simplr is simple: rapidly expand the customer service capacities of e-commerce businesses with speed, empathy and precision. Simplr developed a simple formula that combines knowledgeable, on-demand customer service manpower with machine learning and customized client dashboards that give businesses the ability to invest in a customer service solution that's high quality, affordable and scalable.

"We're looking at a multi-billion-dollar market that's currently underserved by outsourced customer solutions providers," said Eng Tan, CEO of Simplr. "Simplr is using human expertise and technology to deliver world-class customer service and tools that help e-commerce startups across industries like apparel, tech, and food efficiently scale their operations."

How Simplr works
Existing customer service outsourcing is often too expensive, takes too much time and resources to onboard and requires contracts with large volume. Simplr's approach is designed to meet startups where they are and deliver a right-sized, pay-what-you-use model to tackle their most pressing problems. First, the Simplr team analyzes and evaluates a company's customer service approach, history and messaging to get a complete understanding of the brand needs and voice. Simplr then leverages, trains and supports a vigorously screened and on-demand team to respond to customer inquiries; the expert staff capacity is augmented with

Simplr's unique blend of machine learning and intelligent platforms that vet inquiries and give experts the resources they need while helping each customer.

Results
Simplr analyzes customer inquiry data and monitors results via a free customer survey tool to implement improvements that maximize customer satisfaction and reduce costs. With early customers, Simplr has expanded weekend and after-hours coverage and accelerated response times by 5x. Clients - including e-commerce retailers on the 2017 Forbes Next Billion Dollar Startup and Shopify Top 500 lists - have achieved customer service cost reductions of more than 50% since they began working with Simplr.

Simplr has cracked the code on customer service solutions that are US-based, effective but also affordable without requiring huge volume and offshore call centers. For a small to medium size call center, all-inclusive costs per contact can range from $4 to almost $7 - Simplr provides a superior, on-demand 24/7/365 service for 50% - 60% less. Simplr teams can onboard in a matter of hours and businesses only pay for what they use, saving time and money. Simplr's service can be started and stopped at any time, creating a no risk investment for every startup.

"We often get asked - why aren't there already established customer service solutions that serve the high-growth e-commerce startup space? The answer is complex and simple at the same time - because it's hard," added Eng Tan, CEO of Simplr. "For us, democratizing customer service is what drove us to build Simplr. We want to empower startups with top-notch, U.S.-based customer service and free entrepreneurs to do what they do bestŠ-Šdisrupt conventional thinking, innovate and grow their business."

To learn more about Simplr and find out how to get started, visit http://simplr.ai.

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About Simplr
Simplr provides e-commerce companies with top-notch, U.S.-based customer service that's scalable and affordable. In a 24/7 connected world, Simplr lets e-commerce startups design an outsourced and on-demand customer service solution that meets the needs of their business. Simplr delivers maximum flexibility with no contracts and the ability to ramp up or down depending on volume. Simplr was incubated and funded by Asurion, a global leader in customer service with over 300 million customers and shares Asurion's legacy of excellence in customer experiences. Where enterprise-level solutions are costly and restrictive, Simplr can provide world-class customer support tailored specifically to the needs (and budgets) of high growth startups.