Charles raises €6.4 million in seed funding to bring ‘conversational commerce’ to WhatsApp

According to techcrunch, Charles, a startup based in Berlin, Germany, has just raised 6.4 million euros in seed funding led by Accel and HV Capital to further develop its "conversational commerce" SaaS service that can be carried out on chat applications such as WhatsApp .

Charles ’ service connects the chat application’s API interface and the store’s CRM system, putting human chat sales agents at the center and providing support from chatbots and AI.

( Charles official website demonstration page)

As a result, sellers sell products and services through WhatsApp and other chat applications, helping businesses leverage their existing channels to meet customers while bridging the gap between sales inquiries and actual conversions, thereby increasing store conversion rates, customer loyalty and sales revenue.

Weissbeck, one of the founders of Charles , believes that traffic and conversion will be transferred exponentially from offline physical stores and shopping terminals to communication apps, so conversational commerce is expected to become the third pillar of commerce. While connecting existing business channels, it fully taps the potential of personalization through the customer's phone number, a unique identifier .

Accel partner Luca Bocchio said conversational commerce is becoming “an important sales channel for brands” and will reshape the way brands interact with consumers. He also noted that this paves the way for potential new tools to emerge, and Charles could be one of them.

However, Charles also faces some competitors that provide related services. Weissbeck said that when they communicated with potential customers, they found that existing customer service tools such as Zendesk have begun to add chat applications as additional channels, focusing mainly on quickly answering customer questions and providing better customer service rather than sales.

Charles, on the other hand , Weissbeck believes that their capabilities are built on the logic of "feeds," looking at things from the customer's perspective and viewing interactions with customers as ongoing conversations and end-to-end relationships.

Charles 's charging model is simple. It covers costs through the monthly service fee paid by the seller, and then makes profits through the transaction conversion rate of the seller in the conversational commerce. Weissbeck said: "We only take a small part of the seller's net sales to ensure that both of us are motivated."

Charles

Conversational Business