STELLAService today announced a $15 million Series B round of funding and the public release of STELLA Metrics, the first ever customer service analytics platform.

STELLAService’s new round of financing caps a year of success and expansion. Over the past 12 months the company has:

• Built and developed STELLA Metrics, the first data platform dedicated to monitoring and benchmarking every touch point of the online customer experience
• Deployed STELLA Metrics to charter partners that include some of the largest U.S. retailers
• Increased retailer adoption and consumer awareness of the STELLAService Seal, the Web’s only trustmark that objectively signals companies with great customer service
• Produced positive case studies with more than 15 retailers that showed a significant increase in sales achieved by prominently displaying the STELLAService seal
• Launched Happy Customer, an online publication for the ecommerce operator focused on customer service
• Produced 3,982,253 data points on the …

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The following piece by Sarah Etter was originally published on the Monetate Blog. 

As more companies hunt for ways to set themselves apart from the competition, the prospect of a service seal that assures visitors they can trust a website’s security, checkout, and customer support sounds pretty tempting.

Case in point: Our GNC Case Study details how the specialty retailer of health and nutrition products received and tested the optimal placement of a service seal that then helped it boost conversions and decrease cart abandonment.

That got us wondering what websites can expect during the evaluation process, as well as the benefits of service seals. So we sat down with STELLAService’s co-founder John Ernsberger to find out more about these seals and what companies can expect.

Q: What’s the importance of service seals for websites?  

A: As selection and price become less of a differentiator in online commerce, retailers must provide great service as a way to separate …

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We less than a week away from STELLA Summit and excited to announce a full day of great content around improving the customer service experience.

STELLA Summit, to be held at Trump Soho in New York,  is a must-attend event if you’re a retail executive looking to differentiate from the competition with the type of service that creates loyal customers. While space is limited, an invitation to the event can be requested here.

Below you will find an outline of the days excellent line-up of speakers.

8:00 AM – Registration and Breakfast

9:00 AM – State of Service | Jordy Leiser, CEO, STELLAService

As price and selection converge online, customer service is the new battleground. STELLAService CEO Jordy Leiser will outline some of the developments driving this important shift in business of online retail.

9:15 AM – Hospitality as a Differentiator in the Customer Experience  | Susan Salgado, Managing Director, Hospitality Quotient

Six of the fifty “Most Popular” restaurants …

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As a consumer, you know the joy of receiving a package before the estimated delivery date or the satisfaction of a swift reply to a service question posed on Twitter. And, as a professional, you know that your organization needs to offer that same high quality customer service.

As price and selection converge online, customer service is the new battleground. If you’re not thinking about customer service at a high level, it’s time to start.

The 2012 STELLA Summit - to be held Oct. 9 at Trump Soho in New York – is an invite-only, executive-level conference focused on how to improve and bring innovation to the service experience. Expect robust, interactive discussions featuring executives from top retailers and disruptive start-ups alike.

You’ll hear a keynote presentation from Frances Frei, Professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School and the Senior Associate Dean, Director of Faculty Planning and Recruiting. Frei is the best-selling …

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In case you missed the announcement last week, I’m happy to share the news that STELLAService has raised an additional $5 million in funding to keep you in the know when it comes to companies with great (and not so great) customer service.

The funding was co-led by Battery Ventures and DFJ Gotham Ventures and also included RRE Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, and angels Jay Weintraub and Will Thomas. We’re thrilled to have such a terrific, top-tier group of investors behind us.

It’s been an amazing eight months since we announced our first round of funding. Our team has worked around the clock to produce customer service ratings and data on thousands of companies, and we hope you’ve been able to benefit from the guidance and direction our customer service analysts (i.e. “mystery shoppers on steroids”) have allowed us to provide. Our data and insights have been featured in nearly every major media outlet, from Forbes to NBC, in an effort to get the …

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We’ve noticed you admiring our data — don’t be ashamed, we’re proud of it.  As we continue to evaluate the full spectrum of online retailers, we’ll be releasing even more exciting information.  As this happens, we want all the online shoppers who value great customer service as much as we do to join the conversation.

So please, go ahead and become ‘like’ us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/STELLAService.  This way you’ll be able to keep current with which online retailers offer their customers the best when it comes to service, and we’ll be able to get your feedback on what matters most when it comes to serving online shoppers.

Thanks!

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Have you seen Boiler Room?  What about Glengarry Glen Ross?  Have you read Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman?  Good, now you have some idea for what being a part of the STELLA sales team isn’t like.  No, you won’t be selling stocks for inflated prices to unwitting investors.  Yes, you’ll be selling an in-demand, highly valuable product.  No, you won’t do whatever it takes to sell undesirable Chicago real estate to buyers who don’t know any better.  Yes, you’ll help a unique and innovative startup cover new ground and achieve widespread growth.  No, you won’t be an out-bound salesman and experience a tragic downfall in front of your entire family.  Yes, you will feel the satisfaction of guiding consumers to the sites with the best customer service on the Web.

With all that in mind, the STELLAService sales team is growing here in New York City’s Flatiron district, with an increasing number of companies looking to join …

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In case you missed the big news on Ad Age, TechCrunch, WWD or from the chatter on Twitter / Facebook (or the bar on Friday night!), we announced $2 million in funding and launched a brand new site this week…needless to say, the STELLAService team is pumped!

We couldn’t be more thrilled to announce our new investors: Battery Ventures; DFJ Gotham Ventures; RRE Ventures; Consiglere Brand Capital; and angel Mark Wachen. Including our existing angels and business and industry advisors, we’ve assembled quite the stellar team of experienced and successful minds when it comes to e-commerce, branding and understanding and measuring online customer service.

So what does all this mean for Internet retailers and the hundreds of millions of online shoppers out there? Well, for one we plan to expand our merchant ratings and service data from a few hundred online stores last year to several thousand this year. More “deep-dives” into the service quality of online retailers means more …

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Earlier this month, New York Senator Charles Schumer proposed radical legislation that would create cost incentives for companies to keep customer service jobs in the United States. His proposal charges companies a $0.25 excise tax (a big number!) on calls transferred to call centers outside of the country. As you’re probably aware, many American companies outsource their customer service representative (CSR) positions to foreign countries because of reduced labor costs, a practice that many feel reduces the quality of service provided and also takes jobs away from Americans.

In addition to penalizing companies who outsource this function of their business, the bill would also require companies to disclose (via an automated voice system, I’d imagine) which country a customer service representative is handling a call from. This requirement would lift some of the fog from the hazy call center landscape and provide online shoppers with unprecedented insight as to how …

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As promised, you will now be able to leverage our customer service ratings and seals when you really, really need them: on comparison shopping sites. STELLAService announced today that its STELLA Ratings and STELLAService seals will soon be displayed next to listed retailers on the #3 comparison shopping engine TheFind.com, enabling its base of 23 million monthly shoppers to quickly and completely assess the quality of online stores right upfront within search results.

This is a major enhancement to the five-star, community-driven rating system traditionally used by many shopping engines, which provide little differentiation between stores and allow for biased, unreliable reviews of a seller’s service quality to influence a merchant’s overall score. STELLAService, on the other hand, takes a consistent, independent and completely exhaustive approach to evaluating every possible aspect of the online customer experience.

The STELLAService seal, which has become the …

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