Alpha Edison Leads $12M Funding Round for Thankful

The Evolving Landscape of Customer Service

The importance of strong customer service has been significantly underscored in recent years, particularly during the period of the global pandemic.

Thankful AI: A Customer-Centric Approach

Thankful AI, a Venice, California-based company founded in 2018, was born from the personal frustrations of CEO Ted Mico and his co-founder, Evan Tann. Despite lacking prior business experience, they identified a critical gap in the market.

Mico explained to TechCrunch that existing chat solutions often lack substantive value and are excessively time-consuming for customers. He highlighted statistics indicating that customer service represents a $350 billion industry, yet remains largely inefficient. Furthermore, it’s estimated that individuals dedicate approximately 43 days of their lives to customer service interactions. Thankful AI aims to reclaim a substantial portion of that time – potentially up to three weeks.

Reimagining Customer Service's Role

Traditionally, customer service has been viewed as a secondary function within a business. However, Thankful AI proposes a shift in perspective, positioning it as a primary driver of success.

Companies invest heavily in marketing to attract customers, but often, customer service teams lack access to crucial relationship history when addressing issues or inquiries. This disconnect hinders effective problem resolution, as Mico pointed out.

Developing AI-Powered Solutions

Following its inception, Thankful AI dedicated over two years to developing its artificial intelligence-driven customer service software. Mico describes it as “the application layer on top of the help desk,” designed to efficiently manage high volumes of customer requests across various written communication channels, including email, social media, in-app messaging, chat, and text.

To date, the platform has processed and analyzed over 30 million customer service tickets, continually refining its capabilities.

Thankful’s Product Suite

Thankful offers a suite of three distinct products:

• Agent Assist: This tool empowers human agents by intelligently routing issues and suggesting appropriate responses, increasing efficiency by up to 40%.
• AI Agent: This fully automated solution manages the entire customer service process, reducing initial response times and resolving up to 50% of queries independently.
• Analytics: A newly launched feature providing valuable insights into customer feedback and experiences.

Growth and Funding

Over the past four years, Thankful AI has quietly built a client base exceeding 50 brands, including UntuckIt, FabFitFun, and MeUndies. The company also integrates with leading help desk platforms such as Zendesk, Kustomer, and Gladly.

Experiencing 400% year-over-year growth, Thankful AI recently secured $12 million in Series A funding, led by Alpha Edison. Additional investors include Bonfire, Ten-One-Ten, Greycroft, Omega Venture Partners, and Miramar, bringing the company’s total funding to $15 million, including a previously unannounced $3 million investment.

A Competitive Market

The customer service sector is attracting increasing attention from venture capital and mergers & acquisitions. Companies like Sanas, Zendesk, Level AI, and Goodcall have recently garnered significant investment and recognition.

Alpha Edison’s Perspective

Robey Miller, a partner at Alpha Edison, emphasized Thankful’s appeal as an investment due to its focus on the post-purchase customer experience. He noted that data in this area is often unstructured, making it difficult for brands to analyze effectively.

“Thankful provides a tool set instrumental in customer service in a way that has never been available in the past,” Miller stated. He further explained that the technology transforms traditionally rudimentary metrics into actionable insights, enabling businesses to understand how customer service impacts overall outcomes.

Miller believes Thankful is poised to lead innovation in customer service, providing brands with trustworthy, insightful, and actionable tools.

Future Plans

Mico plans to utilize the new funding to expand the engineering team and broaden the product line. The company also intends to extend its services to additional industries, including finance, insurance, and healthcare.

Thankful’s pricing is based on ticket volume and product selection. Importantly, the company offers a unique “try before you buy” approach, allowing potential clients to experience the software’s benefits firsthand. Thankful agents monitor a customer’s existing help desk for a short period to assess their current customer service performance and identify potential improvements.

“Our next step is to deliver data that reveals how your customer service functions – identifying patterns and helping brands enhance their operations,” Mico explained. “This is invaluable information that is often overlooked. Without data, business decisions become subjective. We aim to illuminate that data.”

Note: An error by the company initially resulted in an incomplete listing of investor Omega’s name. It has been corrected to Omega Venture Partners.