Distributed call-center outsourcing service LiveOps has announced the closure of a Series C round of funding for $28 Million. The round was lead by Benchmark Capital, a new investor in the company and a fund that rarely makes later stage investments. Benchmark’s investments in the consumer space, which more readers here may be familiar with, include Pageflakes, Bebo and Yelp among others.
Palo Alto based LiveOps offers web based management of more than 10,000 home based telephone workers. Here’s what makes them interesting: their service operates as a performance based auction, routing incoming calls to the best performing worker available. Top workers participate in IM communities to discuss methods of increasing productivity and solving problems. I like seeing the web make work more interesting and perhaps services like this will help decrease the drudgery of call-center work. At the very least, it will likely make the business more efficient. Unlike previously profiled Sky-Click, an all Skype powered call center solution, LiveOps doesn’t use VOIP at its core. (Update: The company contacted me after publication and corrected this point. LiveOps uses VOIP up to the agent’s phone.)
Prior to today, the company raised a $1 million A round and a $10 million B round from CMEA Ventures and Menlo Ventures.
Former eBay COO Maynard Webb became the LiveOps CEO in December after being introduced to the company by Benchmark’s Bill Gurley. Gurley says Webb’s background, LiveOps’ early success and the company’s strong use of the web all made the investment compelling.
Benchmark is also an investor in ODesk, another distributed workforce service for software developers.
A big part of the belief behind LiveOps is that home based workers are happier, more productive and less subject to turnover than workers in traditional brick and mortar call centers. That industry is plagued by turn over, Gurley says, including churn experienced when one company finds a good city to place a call center and competitors all rush in. The combination of self-scheduling and the comforts of home with the management of competition made possible by the web and telephony’s evolution sounds like a strong approach to business to me.
Woohoo! First to comment! I really like this company and its business model. It provides a great way for people to earn some income with their spare time. All entrepreneurs should consider doing this for a seed capital for their businesses!
Call routing to the most productive worker is a great example of using the web. Hopefully liveops will inspire other architectural entrepreneurs to create smarter solutions using the web.
the highest praise i can give to the co. right now is - i like the domain name for their concept
liveops.com - for live operations; they handle your telephone support lines.
as for their home-based workers model - i like it, saves the co. money.
as for their ‘routing’ system, in which their highest producing employees gets the calls - that remains to be seen how it plays out
bottom line:
generally though, for me atleast - this is a telephone outsourcing co…so hello, ””’Outsource”” it, to a cheaper labor pool than americans.
Nice Wish them the best !
As I work for a job site (SimplyHired.com), I’ve pointed people to LiveOps if they are looking for legit work-at-home jobs. Having Maynard help with things is a definite bonus…
Will be nice to see if the market for telecommuters expands because of LiveOps….
where the hell is mike?
Any idea what sort of client size segments LiveOps caters to and has experience with? i.e.: Companies w/ gross sales under 1M, 1-10M, 100M+, 500M+? i.e.: what volume can they accomodate, and can they handle overlapping international compliance environments? Yes, I know I should research - just wondering if there’a capsul answer off the top of anyone’s head.
hey…
while liveOps is/has been a good example of what the web, combined with tech can do, if you guys want a serious biz that could use a kick. figure out how to have a combined wiki kind of operation, combined with live people working at home/in businesses, and figure out how to do tech support…
companies would pay/kill to be able to save $$$ on this kind of function.
being able to have access to this kind of massive database/information and allowing different businesses/people to have access to it would make for an interesting business…
peace
Hello, I thought your comment covered a lot of the topic, but perhaps you could got a bit more in depth on the last part. Thanks
Excellent read - wonder if they publish any stats regarding customer satisfaction vis-a-vis brick & mortar call centers?
I don’t focus well working from home. Once in a while maybe, but all of the time? No way.
anyone know how big the company is? revs?
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Pretty neat idea. Hope it takes off.