Experticity closes the gap between virtual experience of online retailing and real customer

Posted on May 7, 2007
Filed Under Venture News |

experticity Experticity, Seattle-based provider of live on-screen customer service, raised $2.7 million in series A funding round led by Portland Trust Ltd. and Jammbid Partners. The Experticity two-way audio/video platform is actually conferencing program intended specifically for customer support in retail stores, banks, rental agencies and airports.

From the Exprticity product spec: “The Experticity solution is a network of PC video screens that re-allocate live, on-screen customer service representatives when they are needed, where they are needed. With multiple screens located throughout a store or at every service counter with real-time customer representatives available at a moment’s notice, idle staff in one location can help overworked staff in another.” Here is the screenshot of in-store support:

Experticity screenshot

There is also in-home version to povide support for online retailers. In my opinion Experticiy is the long awaited solution closing the gap between virtual experience of online retailing and real customer. Even tiny incremental shift of sales from in-store retail to online represents huge market opportunities. Some customer survey reports suggest that about 20% of online shoppers do not complete purchase because of lack of live support. Also about 30% of shoppers never buying online cited lack of live support as one of major reasons behind their aversion to online retailing.

In his recent article Small Is The Next Big Om Malik speaks about “the first wave of young businesses finally putting the so called Web 2.0 technologies to work to make good on the promise that this much-ballyhooed generation of start-ups has been vapidly pledging for far too long: that Web2.0 would reinvent the boring, the old fashioned and the antiquated”. While Om Malik is somewhat vague “about Web 2.0 re-inventing old fashioned”, the examples of companies in his article are actually excellent illustration of ever-increasing convergence between web and non-web businesses, no matter is it web 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0. Companies like Experticity help to boost “web/non-web convergence”.

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