ST. LOUIS – Balto, the #1 Real-Time Guidance Platform for contact centers, has announced the completion of a $37.5 million Series B funding round. The funding is led by Stripes and joined by RingCentral Ventures.
Existing investors that participated include Sierra Ventures, TIA Ventures, OCA Ventures, Stage Venture Partners, SaaS Venture Capital, Sandalphon Capital, Cultivation Capital, Jump Capital, and Atreides Management. Riadh Dridi, Stripes Operating Partner and CMO at Automation Anywhere, joins Balto’s board.
The funding comes on the heels of Balto’s two latest product releases and as Balto’s Real-Time Platform surpasses 75 million guided calls and 185 million Real-Time Recommendations. It brings Balto’s total funding to $52 million.
“Balto is creating a mindset shift that is something you only see with category-defining products,” said CEO Marc Bernstein. “We’re moving contact centers from conversation intelligence, which is a great starting point, to conversation excellence. That’s what we’re all shooting for.”
From “What’s the Best Thing to Say?” to “Scale the Best Things to Say”
In the past, contact centers have had to deal with an execution gap between knowing what’s going wrong on calls and actually fixing it. Most solutions danced around this issue without ever solving it: Speech analytics, more coaching, staffing up QA, sticky notes, or whisper mode. These solutions could only tell you what was wrong on calls, or offer solutions after the call was already long gone.
With this round of funding, Balto is doubling down on closing the execution gap by providing contact centers with a way to improve conversations as they’re happening. Specifically, Balto is planning to make leaps in closed-loop reporting, allowing organizations to not only tie agent behavior to call outcomes but also scale top-performing behavior to the entire organization.
“Balto is the only company on earth that offers a closed loop of sourcing the best thing to say on a call and recommending that to a massive amount of people at scale in real time, all while giving insight – in real-time – into what exactly is working and what is not,” said Bernstein. “In the next year, we’re going to be looking at two things: improving Balto’s ability to surface insights so users can implement changes at the push of a button, and improving our fully automated loop.”
“For decades, organizations have struggled to utilize customer insights in order to make customer facing agents more effective. Balto’s Real-Time Guidance solves this problem elegantly by empowering organizations to turn these insights into real-time actions”, said Riadh Dridi, Operating Partner at Stripes. “The addressable market for Balto is massive and I’m thrilled to be joining their board of directors as the company enters its next stage of hypergrowth.”
Since its launch in 2017, Balto has provided over 185 million Real-Time Recommendations across dozens of enterprise customers, including AmTrust Financial, Katapult, Advantage Communications, and National General Insurance. Teams using Balto have seen statistically significant results, including 26% increases in conversion rates, 25% increases in CSAT scores, and 75% faster ramp times for new agents.
“I’m excited to take Real-Time from where we started it, where organizations accept it as a benefit to their teams, to organizations accepting it as the new standard for contact centers,” said Bernstein.https://www.youtube.com/embed/4UromwJFQ-E
About Balto
Balto is the #1 Real-Time Guidance Platform for contact centers. Balto is centered around a simple truth: Better conversations make more money. Powered by AI, Balto scales best practices to agents with the push of a button and gives immediate insight into what’s working and what’s not. Founded in 2017 and based in St. Louis, Missouri, Balto has guided over 75 million conversations around the world.
About Stripes
Stripes is a leading growth equity firm that partners with founders who are building the best products in the software and consumer markets. Stripes’ software practice invests in leading horizontal and vertical software platforms servicing customers from SMB to Enterprise around the world. Stripes strives to serve its partners by delivering valuable resources to create transformative companies. For more information please visit Stripes.
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Author Information
Clint brings over 20 years of market research and consulting experience, focused on emerging technology markets. He was co-founder and CEO of Dash Network, an integrated research and digital media firm focused on the CX market, which was acquired by The Futurum Group in 2022. He previously founded Tractica with a focus on human interaction with technology, including coverage of AI, user interface technologies, advanced computing, and other emerging sectors. Acquired by Informa Group, Clint served as Chief Research Officer for Informa’s research division, Omdia, with management and content strategy responsibility, formed by the combination of Tractica, Ovum, IHS Markit Technology, and Heavy Reading.
Clint was previously the founder and President of Pike Research, a leading market intelligence firm focused on the global clean technology industry, which was acquired by Navigant Consulting where he was Managing Director of the Navigant Research business.
Prior to Pike Research, Clint was Chief Research Officer at ABI Research, a New York-based industry analyst firm concentrating on the impact of emerging technologies on global consumer and business markets.
Clint holds a Master of Business Administration in Telecommunications Management from the University of Dallas and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Washington & Lee University.
