Viewabo, a startup that aims to enhance remote customer support with video and live-streaming technology, announced Monday that is has raised $1.77 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round led by Hive Ventures.
The round also saw participation from 500 Global, Draper Associates and other investors, Viewabo said in statement.
It also said Viewabo will use the funds to focus on product development and expand beyond real-time use cases, penetrate new markets in the US and the Asia-Pacific – especially for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) – and hire more talents for engineering and growth.
“The lack of visibility in tech support often results in misunderstandings, which makes the process time-consuming and frustrating. With our service, customer support teams can request access to the customer’s smartphone cameras and see real-time video of user issues, which will significantly speed up diagnosis and issue resolution times,
“There is a lot of room for growth, especially in the SMB market, and we are excited to continue transforming the customer support experience,” said George Cheng, Chief Executive Officer of Viewabo.
Founded by Cheng in 2019, Viewabo streamlines remote customer support by enabling customer support agents to request access to rear-facing user smartphone cameras to receive real-time video of the issue.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California with a presence in Taipei, Viewabo allows support agents to request access to smartphone cameras and view real-time video streams of user issues without requiring users to download an app.
Agents can annotate, pause or rotate the video stream to better guide the customer, and can record and save the stream for later review or training. No customer-facing app is required, making the process as frictionless as possible.
Remote customer support over the phone, email and messaging has long been a source of frustration for both customers and agents due to the complexity of troubleshooting without visual support. Video has emerged as a frontrunner to resolve this issue; research has shown a 79 percent increase among German consumers who would use video calls for customer service. However, many video support solutions involve third-party consumer video chat apps that do not integrate with most helpdesk systems – a problem that Viewabo aims to address.
“A hyperconnected world must be supported by the necessary infrastructure and talent to thrive. As the world moves faster and technology grows more complex, support systems must also evolve to keep pace. Video is the natural successor as it improves comprehension and enables real-time resolution, yet requires no in-person contact,
“We believe that there is strong potential in Viewabo’s model to empower modern customer support teams, especially in the digital future,” said Yan Lee, Founder and Managing Partner of Hive Ventures.
Thus far, Viewabo has been successful in optimising the customer experiences of businesses such as NZXT, a Los Angeles-based computer hardware manufacturer. To improve customer retention for its computer-building service, BLD by NZXT, the NZXT support team was able to leverage Viewabo’s service to significantly simplify the troubleshooting experience, in some instances reducing 30-minute interactions to a matter of seconds with real-time video feedback.
“With the pandemic accelerating the adoption of video calls, Viewabo is building web-based interactive tools that can enhance the customer experience when dealing with everyday issues. Thanks to its dedicated team, we believe the company has the potential to become the next- generation video customer service platform,” said Tony Wang, Managing Partner at 500 Global.
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