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Freespee Talk will help call centre agents improve customer experience and accelerate sales

LONDON, NOVEMBER 22^nd, 2018 ​– Freespee, the cloud communication platform company that helps consumer brands better engage and convert online customers, is proud to announce the launch of Freespee Talk.

Talk is the first-ever contact centre app that’s 100 percent driven by customers’ online activity. It will help businesses streamline their operations and keep their customers happy – in a cost-effective way.

Freespee Talk turns contact centres into dynamic environments that are fuelled by real-time data. It includes call tracking, predictive call routing and granular data collection. The app takes insights gathered by the customers browsing experience and displays this information for a call centre agent via a simple, visual interface.

Most contact centres operate on basic information; i.e. the numerical options a customer chooses on a keypad when they call. But an agent using Freespee Talk gets extended customer insights when they pick up a line, including:

• Where the customer is calling from – which also determines how the call has been routed
• What device they’re calling from – so the customer’s level of patience can be assessed
• Their previous internet browsing and calling history – so a call handler knows what previous interactions the customer has had with the brand
• The page the customer is calling from – whether it’s a specific product or a complaint page.

By assigning dynamic phone numbers to specific product pages and campaigns, a call can be routed to an agent responsible for that particular audience segment.

These call handlers will be trained to answer queries. This helps increase the conversion rate across the sales funnel, from browsing to the point of purchase. This is particularly relevant when big-ticket items like cars or real estate are being considered.

A call centre manager can also temporarily expand their inbound team and adapt to call influxes by using resources       in the right way. All of this is without the need for extra costs, as Talk is a cloud service that can be easily upscaled, or altered, without massive infrastructure changes.

Belron, the world’s leading vehicle glass repair and replacement group, has been an early adopter of Talk for the last two months. This implementation has helped the firm streamline its day-to-day operations and improve its conversations with its customers.

“Freespee Talk lets us tap into a rich seam of contextual data within voice interactions between us and our customers – and lets us use machine learning and AI to empower our agents. It takes care of the entire customer conversation process, giving us rich data on their browsing and intent, so the only thing left for the agents to do is what they do best – speak to customers,” commented Sean McMahon, CRM Digital Solutions Manager at Belron.

“Seeing the outstanding results that our client Belron has achieved during the product trial was very exciting. We are now delighted to be able to take the next step and launch Talk to the wider market” added Anne de Kerckhove, CEO, Freespee.

Freespee is bringing its intuitive, data-powered app to all of its customers. Built for businesses who wish to turn the web into a revenue funnel, Talk will help companies identify browser intent, improve the customer experience and accelerate sales.

About Freespee

Freespee was founded in Uppsala, Sweden in 2009 by product designer and software engineer Carl Holmquist and Tobias Lindgren, with a vision to make brand conversations more impactful.

Freespee offers a cloud communication platform that makes marketing, sales and service teams better at what they do. The company powers millions of conversations and has become an integral tool for companies worldwide to better understand and bespoke consumer journeys and accelerate sales conversion.

At Freespee we believe that every consumer deserves a personalised and fulfilling conversational experience. We do this by bridging the gap between a consumer’s digital journey and the conversation through contextual data. Our platform enables best in class call tracking, unified communication tools, predictive call routing and automated sales and CRM workflows. With Freespee, you can track prospects from a campaign to the final sale.

Led by CEO Anne de Kerckhove, Freespee has over 90 employees in 5 offices across Europe and is growing over 70% year on year. Freespee is backed by leading European investors including Verdane, Sunstone, Ventech and Inventure.

For more information please visit www.freespee.com

-ENDS-

Media contacts:

Sarah Taylor

sarah.taylor@berkeleypr.com / +44 (0) 118 909 0909

Funding will fuel Freespee’s accelerated profitable growth across Europe.

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LONDON, JULY 24^th, 2018 ​– Freespee, the software company that helps consumer brands better engage and convert online customers via a suite of enterprise cloud communications solutions, today announced a €9.5 million strategic investment from Verdane Capital IX.

The company expects revenue to grow by 80% in 2018 and is gearing up for continued profitable growth.

The investment will enable Freespee to accelerate the development of its unique solutions stack. The company is investing heavily in R&D, AI and product development to cope with market demand. The company will double its engineering team by the end of the year and will be hiring across its five European offices in engineering, data science, business development, customer success and marketing.

The company has recently signed deals with Fiat, Vauxhall, Peugeot, Club Med, E-on and eBay to name a few.

The investment was led by Verdane’s Partner Pål Malmros, who leads the fund’s B2B software arm and who will be joining Freespee’s Board of Directors alongside earlier investors Ventech, Inventure and Sunstone.

“We are delighted to welcome Verdane as strategic investor and I look forward to working with our fantastic team, the board and our great founders to drive excellence at Freespee during this period of hyper growth. An investor of Verdane’s calibre also puts us in a very strong strategic position as we explore future opportunities in new markets”, said Anne de Kerckhove, CEO of Freespee.

“I am very pleased to welcome Pål Malmros to the Board and to the investor group. We at Sunstone have had the privilege of working with Verdane previously and have no doubt that this investment represents yet another important step in the continued success of Freespee.” said Freespee’s Chairman, Jørgen Smidt, who is a Venture Partner with Sunstone.

“Freespee’s platform is delivering mission critical revenue impact for its clients by drastically increasing sales conversion. This, together with the team’s obsession with customer success, is what attracted us to the company. I’m looking forward to working with the Board and the team to help the company realise its huge potential”, said Pål Malmros from Verdane Capital.

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About Freespee

Freespee was founded in Uppsala, Sweden in 2009 by Swedish software engineers Carl Holmquist and Tobias Lindgren, with a vision to make the web more conversational.

Freespee offers a cloud communication platform that makes marketing, sales and service teams better at what they do. The company powers millions of conversations and has become an integral tool for companies worldwide to better understand consumer journeys and accelerate sales conversion.

At Freespee we believe that every consumer deserves a personalised and fulfilling conversational experience. We do this by allowing consumer-facing brands to have contextualised conversations with their web and app users by combining multiple data silos into a single digital function.

For more information please visit www.freespee.com

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About Verdane Capital

Verdane funds provide flexible growth capital to fast-growing software, consumer internet, energy or high-technology industry businesses, through both minority and majority investments in individual companies and portfolios. Verdane funds act as ambitious, active, and long-term owners, helping management teams and companies accelerate and sustain growth by leveraging the Verdane advisory team’s unrivalled technology capabilities and proven track record in driving business value. Verdane funds’ and SPVs’ current portfolio of 42 core companies includes Boozt, EasyPark, Mustad, inRiver and Polytech. Verdane funds have attracted SEK 12 billion in total commitments from investors.

Verdane Advisory Group has 30 employees working out of offices in Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Oslo and Stockholm.

For more information, please visit www.verdanecapital.com

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About Sunstone

Sunstone is one of Europe’s most active early-stage venture capital firms. With offices in Copenhagen, Berlin and Paris we invest in seed and Series A rounds in technology companies all across Europe.

Since inception in 2007, Sunstone has backed over 70 exceptional founding teams, including Asetek, Boozt, GetYourGuide, Prezi, Neo4j, Tink, Natural Cycles, Seriously, Lillydoo. The fund invests throughout the software stack and across industries.

For more information, please visit www.sunstone.eu

-ENDS-

Media contacts:

Sarah Taylor

sarah.taylor@berkeleypr.com

+44 (0) 118 909 0909

Natacha Heurtault (France)

nh@early-com.com

+33 (0) 6 12 23 58 60

Freespee, the leading customer communication platform has announced two new major appointments within the company, each of which will serve to support the on-going development and expansion of the business.

Anne de Kerckhove will take the position of CEO for the customer communication platform, which is currently the only technology available supporting businesses and their website visitors or app users to talk in real-time via any interface, typed or spoken.

Most recently CEO at Iron Group and Iron Capital, Anne has a proven record in scale ups and global growth acceleration in digital media, entertainment and e-commerce. She successfully led several innovation companies to hyper growth internationally including Inspired Gaming Group and Videology.

Anne has succeeded Carl Holmquist, Co-Founder of Freespee, who will retain his role as Chief Strategy Officer. Carl comments, “We are no longer a start-up from Sweden. We are a growth company with 5 international offices, headquartered in London. These new appointments are going to really help us grow and expand globally as a business and we are very excited about the year ahead.”

Anne who is also an angel investor in over 25 companies and a mentor to entrepreneurs and sits on the board of 7digital and 888.com said, “I am delighted to join the talented Freespee team. The company is already experiencing double digit profitable growth and I look forward to accelerating our deployment even more broadly across Europe and North America. “Our clients are at the centre of everything we do and we will continue to invest heavily in Freespee’s innovative product suite to continuously drive greater value for our brands and their customers.”

Freespee has also announced the appointment of Dominic Ely as CFO. Dom has spent 20 years in private equity, investing in growth companies across a range of sectors, including software and media. He became CFO/COO of Zinc Ahead, a pharmaceutical compliance SaaS business, which grew rapidly before its sale to Veeva Systems in 2015. In the last two years he has invested in and worked with a number of early stage SMEs and is a Non-Executive Director of Kudos Innovations.

Dom comments, “I am thrilled to be joining Freespee at this exciting time in its evolution. We’ll be building on the great achievements of its founders and am looking forward to working with Anne, a world class tech CEO.”

Carl Holmquist summarised the developments; “Building on our successes so far, Anne and Dominic will lead Freespee to pursue our mission: to give brands the tools to make every customer conversation impactful. These appointments put me back in my sweet spot – looking into the future and working out how we can build what our world leading customers need in the years to come.”

Contact Information:

For more information contact:
Pamela Badham – Pamela@manyminds.digital / 07825567808 Henrietta Lawrence – Henrietta.lawrence@freespee.com

• About Anne de Kerckhove: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-de-kerckhove-b4895/
• About Dominic Ely: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominic-ely-0163401/
• About Carl Holmquist: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlholmquist/

About Freespee

Freespee is the only customer communication platform that allows businesses and their website visitors or app users to talk in real-time via any interface, typed or spoken.

Freespee’s customer communication platform is designed to turn more web visitors and app users into customers, driving more sales.

The customer communication platform enables online businesses to see their website visitors and app users, see the conversations being had with those customers and use them to trigger specific and relevant actions to help tailor the customer experience and drive conversion.

Freespee is trusted by some of the world’s leading businesses including Axa, eBay, Schibsted, Fiat, and Peugeot to enable millions of customer conversations every month.

The company, which has raised a total of $17.25m to date, was founded by Swedish software engineers in 2009 and is headquartered in London with offices in Uppsala, Paris, Düsseldorf and Barcelona.