StellaService Inc. has raised $15 million in Series C funding led by Comcast Ventures. The new capital will go toward building staff and adding products to its retailer customer service and fulfillment rating service, the company says.
With this funding round, StellaService has raised $37 million.
Comcast Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of Comcast Corp., invests in businesses in digital advertising, consumer, enterprise and infrastructure. Comcast Ventures managing partner Sam Landman will take an observer, or non-voting, seat on the StellaService board of directors.
The latest funding round included new investors Novel TMT and Toba Capital. Previous investors Battery Ventures, Gotham Ventures, RRE Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners also participated.
In 2013 StellaService raised $15 million in a Series B funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners. Norwest also has made investments in such online retailers as Gilt Groupe, No. 68 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide; ModCloth Inc., No. 198; and Gemvara.com, No. 487.
Comcast Ventures has invested in subscription beauty products e-retailer Birchbox Inc., No. 254 in the Top 500, as well as online information resource About.com and BlogHer, a community and social media company focused on women who blog.
StellaService measures the customer service, shipping, delivery and returns daily of U.S. e-retailers. It does so by ordering and returning real products, and calling, emailing, and live-chatting with sales and service teams–all anonymous to the retailer.
In 2010 StellaService began rating online retailers and those that scored high became eligible to add the StellaService seal of approval to their websites. The company didn’t charge retailers for the seal, or consumers for the ratings StellaService provides at the shopper-oriented section of its web site, StellaService.com/consumer. But in 2013 StellaService rolled out its first revenue-producing product, dubbed Stella Metrics, a service that provides retailers with data on how they—and their competitors—perform customer service tasks.
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