Lauren Wilson spent seven years working at Chime Solutions, her family’s outsourcing call center. On a daily basis, she saw 10%-20% of the workforce calling off work, leading to substantial productivity loss for the company.
“Employees don’t get paid, businesses have revenue loss and customers get longer holding times because someone who is supposed to be there isn't,” Wilson said.
In the human resources and operation departments, she learned the personal stories of staff members but also saw how those callouts affected the revenue. That inspired Wilson to launch a startup.
ImIn Inc. is a staffing software platform aimed at the call center industry that helps employees meet their weekly minimums with flexibility. Workers have access to their schedules with rewards to work peak hours, while businesses can fill in scheduling gaps through notifications to employees.
Six months before the startup’s platform officially launched on Aug. 1, ImIn raised a $1 million seed round from Atlanta-based Collab Capital, which specializes in investments for Black-owned startups. The money is going toward the company's hiring and go-to-market strategies.
The platform's launch comes amid a hot job market that doesn't appear to be slowing down, despite signs of a recession. Nonfarm payroll rose 528,000 during the month of July, nearly double economists' expectations, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5% from 3.6% the month before, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, employees have started prioritizing more flexible schedules. Plus, salary offers are going up in Atlanta and nationally, leading some employees to leave their current posts for more pay. Mediocre performers aren't being managed out or terminated at the same rates they once were, human resource consultants told The Playbook.
Changing labor force dynamicsis the biggest driver for the startup’s growth, said Wilson. With a shift of focus on flexibility in employee’s work schedules, the call center industry has been slow to catch up.
“We assumed daily absenteeism would decrease, but there's a lot of single moms, kids at home and people who are sick,” said Wilson. “The ability to work from home wasn't an option in the call center space because of the level of information to deal with. The platform was part of knowing the workforce was changing.”
Last year, Wilson piloted the platform with around 60 people. Over the course of eight months,she said the platform made over $830,000 in revenue and got back around 30,000 hours of productivity for companies.
The startup has six employees, including an in-house development team, a product management role, a sales representative and Wilson. Three of whom are based in Atlanta with the remaining employees in Portugal and India.
The startup’s revenue model is licensed-based, where a fee is charged to a company per license per month. The startup has licenses for 600 user employees, Wilson said. She's aiming to grow to 1,500 licenses by the end of the year.
With approximately 500,000 call customer service agents based in the U.S., Wilson says her company could grow enough by focusing exclusively on that industry. There’s a possibility for it to expand into others such as retail or fast food.
ImIn is one of the latest startups to get an investment from Atlanta-based early-state investment firm Collab Capital. The firm was founded by Google for Startups Head Jewel Burks Solomon, Atlanta Techstars Social Impact Accelerator Director Barry Givens and Goodie Nation Co-Founder Justin Dawkins.
Other Atlanta-based companies in the firm’s portfolio include real estate investing platform Nectar, rental marketplace BoxedUp, beauty startup Hairbrella and music licensing startup Music Tech Works.
