Focusing On Relationships: Chorus.ai Brings In $45M Series C To Track Sales Conversations

Conversation intelligence company Chorus.ai has secured $45 million in Series C funding to help sales teams reach their quotas by being more productive.

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Georgian Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors Emergence Capital and Redpoint Ventures, and new investor Sozo Ventures.

The new round brings the 5-year-old company’s total amount raised to $85.2 million, according to Crunchbase data. Georgian also led the company’s $33 million Series B investment back in December 2018, according to Crunchbase data.

The new cash infusion will be used to expand its go-to-market team and continue to invest in product innovation, such as expanding capabilities to capture signals within interactions, especially those that are tied to the relationship and help drive a deal to close, CEO Jim Benton told Crunchbase News.

“We are seeing with work-from-home that there is a demand for conversation intelligence because you can’t see your team or walk the halls,” he said. “With Chorus.ai, you can digitally walk the halls–watch the calls and give feedback.”

How it works

Benton joined the San Francisco-based company as CEO in March from Apollo AI, where he had also been CEO.

Benton was familiar with Chorus.ai from being a customer and said he was able to “see firsthand the brilliance of the platform” and how it was a tool that enables salespeople to get closer to their clients.

Chorus.ai’s platform helps sales teams capture different interactions with customers through meetings, calls and emails for diagnosis.

It analyzes keywords and topics, such as if pricing was discussed, next steps were set, the right discovery questions were asked, if new items were rolled out, or if competitors were mentioned. Benton said this makes for better feedback and even for better handoffs to other salespeople.

“We want to make sure each person says, ‘I was just watching the call, and here is where we left off,’ or ‘I noticed this theme in your conversation, so let’s get started there,’ ” Benton said. “We are putting the ‘R’ in customer relationship management. There is a lot with the ‘customer’ and ‘management’ aspects, but in terms of ‘relationship,’ that does not always make it back into the CRM, and we think it should.”

What investors are saying

Simon Chong, managing partner at Georgian Partners, said in a written statement that the firm was attracted to Chorus.ai’s use of artificial intelligence to capture customer conversations in real time.

“The challenges businesses are facing in 2020 have created a renewed urgency to strengthen customer relationships, streamline sales handoffs, and enhance collaboration within teams,” he added. “Those rich AI-driven insights, integrated directly into the CRM and sales workflow, are already helping some of the world’s most respected and fast-growing companies win more deals.“

The company also announced that Greg Holmes, former head of sales and corporate strategy at Zoom, will join its board.

“At Zoom, we first used Chorus to onboard our newest reps quickly,” Holmes said in a written statement. “The sales department immediately saw value, scaling our best practices and increasing sales in a key offering by 20 percent. Seeing this type of success as a customer made joining the board and personally investing in Chorus an easy decision.”

Next steps for Chorus.ai

Meanwhile, the company doubled its headcount to more than 100 employees and tripled its revenue over the past year, Benton said.

The company also just released a new user experience that Benton said was well received, so the next step for Chorus.ai will be to go deeper into understanding how interactions can help with closing deals.

“We are continuing to make sure we are understanding these interactions for teams and leadership to see what works so they bring their best,” he added. “You want to make sure you represent the best of your team, give feedback, coaching, have the right messaging and which interactions drive the best close rates–all the science behind what success looks like.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias