viavoo closes a funding round and raises €1.5 million from Crédit Agricole Private Equity

viavoo, a leading provider of sentiment and text analytics software for customer feedbacks, announces it has raised €1.5 million from Crédit Agricole Private Equity.

Founded in 2009, viavoo provides for large, brand name companies a full range of Customer Experience and social CRM software solutions to better understand and engage with their customers across multiple channels, including e-mail, chat, surveys, social media, blogs, forums, and other customer touchpoints.

The increasingly widespread use of internet channels (desktop, smartphone, tablet…) and the social media traction (facebook, twitter…) allow customers to deliver instant opinions and feelings, questions or complaints about a product or a service.

viavoo’s core technology is a multi-channel, interactive and semantic platform enabling a continuous, real-time and deep textual analysis of the massive amounts of information from social media, as well as direct customer communication channels. As a result, viavoo transforms text-based customer feedback into valuable insight (customer path topics and satisfaction, emerging issues, risks, competitors,…) without any additional human effort.

viavoo Smarter Feedbacks, an integrated listening systems and web-based software suite, provides multiple features to:
•    assess customer experience,
•    improve consumer’s engagement and loyalty,
•    optimize customer relationship processes,
•    monitor online reputation.

Xavier Brunaud, Associate at Crédit Agricole Private Equity, explained: “The company’s management team has extensive experience in content management and CRM. viavoo’s ability to attract leaders in e-commerce as well as banking, telecoms and consumer packaged goods is really appealing. We are proud to support this company whose offering is fully in tune with the web’s growing “social” dimension.”

viavoo has been a fast growing company since inception. A large number of corporates already relies on viavoo to meet their needs of awareness, responsiveness and flexibility about voice of customer, given the increasing number of social media and customer touchpoints.

As of today, viavoo employs fifteen people serving customers across various B2C areas (including Cdiscount.com, Voyages-SNCF.com, Vente-Privee.com, Bouygues Telecom, Nivea and Europcar).
Its management team now aims to step up the company’s growth in France and Europe, while maintaining a rapid pace of technological innovation, upgrading viavoo software suite.

Boosted by its success and thanks to this funding round, viavoo intends to:
•    fuel its growth by stepping up its marketing operations in France and Europe ;
•    develop an English version of its platform ;
•    enhance its software suite by offering new applications and features.

Thierry Desforges, Chairman and founder of viavoo, commented: “We have developed a new generation of software, able to understand customer verbatim instantly in much the same way as the human brain. Crédit Agricole Private Equity’s investment will enable us to develop our platform in English language and strengthen our commercial capabilities in France and abroad”.

Participants in the funding round

Xavier Brunaud, Associate, Venture Capital, Crédit Agricole Private Equity
Marine Huber, Analyst, Venture Capital, Crédit Agricole Private Equity

Advisers
Legal adviser to viavoo: SB Avocats, Sacha Bénichou
Legal adviser to Crédit Agricole Private Equity: Jones Day, Charles Gavoty, Anne Kerneur
Crédit Agricole Private Equity due diligence: Ernst & Young, Emmanuel Picard, François Poncet, Renaud Regnier
Financial adviser: Chausson Finance, Thibault Lougnon