Barcelona, Spain -- (ReleaseWire) -- 12/14/2018 --Whisbi, the conversational sales & marketing platform for enterprises, announces today that it has raised €5M. The investment round was led by Columbia Lake Partners, a fund backed by a knowledgeable group of investors, including partners at Bessemer Venture Partners, and also supported by existing investors Active Venture Partners and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI). The round is a combination of equity and debt financing.

Launched in 2014 by CEO Alex Bisbe and CTO Jose Luis Cantero, Whisbi is at the forefront of changing the way brands connect with customers online through conversational sales & marketing – the customer relationship management (CRM) software market is expected to reach a whopping $40 billion in revenue by the end of 2018. In fact, it is the fastest-growing software market and is expected to double in size by 2025.

Whisbi already partnered with many major Automotive and Telecommunication brands, globally. The company is also focused on growing its customer base in other industries, such as Travel and Banking & Insurance. Whisbi clients include Verizon, Vodafone, Orange, A1, Toyota, Hyundai, and Volkswagen Group, just to name a few.

Daniel Bull, an Investment Manager at Columbia Lake Partners, said "Whisbi's solution allows brands to engage customers in a human way, turning customer queries into sales opportunities, and allowing brands to achieve online conversion rates that rival those of their retail counterparts. We were impressed with Whisbi's cost efficient growth to date, and their ability to win and maintain top names in the telco and automotive verticals. This will be the first investment for Columbia Lake Partners in Spain, and we are excited that it is with Whisbi Technologies."

"We plan to use this investment to build on our AI-powered conversational sales platform and expand our services on a global scale. This investment is a recognition of the hard work and dedication of the whole company in the last 12 months. We are completing a great 2018 and 2019 looks even more promising," says Whisbi CEO Alex Bisbe.

The investment – which brings the total raised by Whisbi to €11.5M – will be used to rapidly scale all sides of the business. The company will hire more software engineers, product owners, sales reps, customer success and support to its team, as well as expand globally with offices in key countries in 2019.

World's leading conversational sales platform for Enterprises

The online sales environment is changing. Most enterprises in traditional industries who have a presence in the retail space have seen declining footfall into their stores/branches. More and more customers are moving to online channels when in search for a new telecom provider, a new car, a new holiday and even a new credit card or a mortgage. However, catalogue-like websites showing only products and information, with an inbound call option are not enough to achieve high conversion rates and increase digital revenue.

"Multi-channel brands have always faced challenges converting online consumers at the same rates as in store. With increasing acquisition costs in existing channels like PPC and Social spend, converting a customer once they arrive on your website is becoming more important. This is an area where CLP is actively investing," said Craig Netterfield, Managing Partner, Columbia Lake Partners.

Whisbi is helping brands to connect with customers online and use conversation-driven sales or conversational sales to sell more. With conversational selling, brands can pull down the barriers that prevent online customers buying online and give the best leads a direct, real-time line to their sales team. Whisbi gives the customers the power to reach out to the brands when it's convenient for them, and — with the help of intelligent chatbots — Whisbi can pre-qualify them and make sure their requests get routed to the right team either at a call center or a physical store location.

Alex Bisbe, CEO explains: "Whisbi enables brands to connect with customers online and turns conversations into customers. Our technology is comparable to what is commonly used for customer service, but used in the sales context."

Jose Luis Cantero, CTO adds: "The human interaction is the most effective conversion tool. The challenge is to use it effectively; combine it with new technologies such as AI, assistants and RPA and have everything seamlessly included in one end-to-end ecosystem. At Whisbi, we have developed just that."

Brands that have already embraced conversational selling have their AI-powered sales agents assisting their online customers in real-time. They are designing the new generation of customer experience and creating conversational funnels that are centered around customers.