Dive Brief:

• StellaService, a company that tracks customer service on behalf of retail partners, announced it has received $15 million in venture capital. 
• The new round of funding is StellaService’s first cash infusion in more than two years, and brings its total to $37 million. 
• Google uses StellaService ratings as part of its five-star ratings service and on merchant profile pages. 

Dive Insight:

With omnichannel strategies making customer service the ultimate differentiator, StellaService—a startup that specializes in measuring the customer service performance of retail and e-commerce players—has won a new round of funding.

StellaService uses secret shoppers to make hundreds of purchases per day from traditional and e-commerce retailers, tracking deliveries, refunds, response times and more. While the company collects data on many major companies, clients such as Wal-Mart and Abercrombie & Fitch pay Stella to access performance data, and Google uses StellaService data to inform its ratings system.

Growing fast but not yet profitable, the company plans use the funds to establish new products such as metrics on in-store customer service following an online purchase, as well as expand into markets beyond retail.