Omnichannel communications platform Trengo nabs $36M

Trengo, a Dutch omnichannel communications platform, today announced that it raised $36 million in series A funding led by Insight Partners and Peak Capital. With the new funds, Trengo aims to attract engineering talent, grow internationally, and develop its platform further, according to CEO Patrick Meutzner.

The pace of digital transformation in communications can be daunting, creating business inefficiencies. Increased remote work put pressure on alignment within teams, giving rise to the market for enterprise communication platforms. There’s been a significant increase in customer channels — for example, WhatsApp Business, Instagram Direct Message and Google Business Messages — as customers expect better and faster service online. Meanwhile, employees are collaborating from different locations, in some cases having to switch between tools to collaborate.

Founded in Utrecht in 2017, Trengo combines multiple internal and external communication channels on a single screen. In 2015, Meutzner had the idea for the company’s software-as-a-service platform, but it took until 2017 for Trengo to launch.

Meutzner founded Trengo with Marcel van der Weerd, and in the same year, Igo Trampe joined. “Trengo helps companies to communicate and interact with clients in a human way,” Meutzner told VentureBeat via email. “Together, they want to create a platform which streamlines omnichannel communications internally and externally. In a world in which customers and teams communicate through an increasing number of channels and media, Trengo bundles all this communication, creating one clear overview for consistent, efficient and easy customer service and team collaboration.”

Bundling communications

According to Salesforce, the average customer uses 10 different channels to communicate with companies. But there’s value for businesses that meet customers where they are. Omnisend found that marketers using three or more channels in any one campaign earned a 287% higher purchase rate than those using a single-channel campaign. Moreover, purchase frequency is 250% higher, and the average order value is 13% more per order.

“Three benefits from Trengo that immediately stand out are the possibilities it offers for working remote, team collaboration, and omnichannel communications in one view,” Meutzner said. “The goal is to streamline the processes that enable companies to communicate in the most efficient way. In a world where people are increasingly annoyed by malfunctioning chatbots, the Trengo platform creates a way for companies to give client communication a human touch.”

Above: Trengo’s backend dashboard.

Image Credit: Trengo

Meutzner says that the pandemic led to a massive shift in demand from on-premises solutions to working in the cloud. While it competes with a number of startups in the omnichannel space, including Iterable and Glia, Meutzner asserts that Trengo stands out by bundling the most integrations (e.g., WhatsApp Business, Instagram Direct Message, and Google Business Messages) in one view with “a user-friendly approach.”

In the past year, Trengo tripled its customer base from 700 to 2,000 customers including Europcar, Yobbers, and Oppo, processing more than 12.5 million messages per month for more than 20,000 users. It currently has 70 to 80 employees, and Meutzner expects Trengo to have 200 employees by the end of the year.

“Because Trengo had already developed a working product, it was able to tap into the needs of a changing world and accommodate clients in this challenging time,” Meutzner said. “In the near future, Trengo wants to expand its [global] activities and truly become a widely used platform all over the globe, providing [businesses] in all countries with the opportunity to increase their customer service and productivity.”