Call hold deferral app FastCustomer is announcing that it has raised $750K worth of seed funding from 500 Startups, Bullet Time Ventures, Andrew Warner, Maneesh Arora, Fortify.vc, Carnet Williams, Tom Kulzer and Henry Parry-Okeden.
Attempting to finally alleviate long hold times for people who have better things to do than wait on hold (um, all of us), FastCustomer lets you register your phone number via an app and then allows you select from one of 2500 companies you’d like to call, offering to call you back when there’s a human available to talk to. The app is in the same space as Lucyphone and Fonolo but differentiates itself by streamlining the process into one click.
Fast Customer CEO Aaron Dragushan tells me that since February the service has saved users over 500K minutes on hold and now has 50K users across both its iPhone and Android apps. FastCustomer currently monetizes through sponsorships, call back modules and plans on eventually charging companies for data garnered through end of call surveys.
FastCustomer will be using the new financing to expand its team, increase user acquisition and expand to other platforms. Dragushan hopes that one day customers will be able to use the service by text.
“People hate waiting on hold. It’s a waste of our time honestly,” says Dragushan. “Companies have millions of computers that wait on hold, so why can’t the computers just hold hands, and when the humans are ready, put us in touch?” Yeah.