• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 7, 2018

Launched in 2014, Podium has specialized in helping local business manage online reviews. It has just raised $60 million to grow its customer communication platform. 

The funding was led by IVP and accompanied by Accel, Summit Partners, Y Combinator, and GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Increasingly, the Utah-based startup has been developing additional products to facilitate other forms of communication between businesses and customers.

Podium’s platform now supports customer messaging, reviews, webchat and customer feedback channels, which, all together, have been adopted by nearly 20,000 small businesses.

Presently, Podium how claims to have a hand in roughly 4 million customer interactions every month.

Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium, says small business need all the help they can get.

“The vast majority of these companies aren’t directly competing with online retailers for their services or products, but they are competing against their convenience,” according to Rea.

“This investment will allow Podium to continue providing new tools to bridge that level of convenience and modernize the way these businesses communicate on a local level.”

Due to growing demand from mid-market and enterprise clients, Podium is also developing products and features to better serve these customers, as well as expanding into more international markets.

The fresh resources should also help Podium hire an additional 100 employees by the end of the year.

At the beginning of 2018, its counted some 300 employees on its payroll.