No More Call Centers: Needle Grabs $10.5M To Turn Your Fans Into Customer Service Reps

Thanks to increasingly powerful mobile and web technologies, people can work from practically anywhere. One eCommerce startup, the Utah-based Needle, sees a big opportunity for this mobile, remote, and telecommuting workforce to change the way businesses connect with their customers and influence the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Rather than relying on customer service reps stuffed into rows of cubicles in call centers to offer canned answers to customer questions, Needle offers a social eCommerce platform that connects online shoppers to experts and brand evangelists -- people that actually use the product. In April, as a way of demonstrating the "work anywhere" model -- and that Needle practices what they preach -- the team swapped out its traditional office for a decked-out Airstream motorhome. While this alternative approach may sound gimmicky, it seems that investors are intrigued, as the company announced today that it has closed a $10.5 million round of series B financing.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/O0lB3aUNgHg/

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