UserEvents, a startup whose technology alerts corporations when customers are having trouble with online transactions, has attracted a $250,000 venture capital investment from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

Fredericton-based UserEvents has developed enterprise software called CxEngage that allows large corporations or organizations to instantly detect clients who are having problems with their website. Before the client clicks off in a huff, CxEngage allows the corporation’s call centre to phone the customer, sort out the problem and use the engagement to make additional sales. At the very least, customers are left with the impression that this is a company that responds to their needs, so the experience cements loyalty and therefore increases sales.

CEO Jeff Thompson said in an interview this morning that the funding will help the company accelerate its rollout in 2013. It is now in talks about adopting CxEngage with several potential customers in Canada and the U.S., including banking, telecom and online retail organizations, and Thompson said the company hopes to close a deal soon.  

Less than a year old, UserEvents already has six employees and is working with two University of New Brunswick graduate students on developing new projects.

Having launched the venture by financing it himself, Thompson said he reached an agreement to take funding from NBIF largely because he knew the executives and he wanted to work with funders from his own backyard.

“I had a longstanding relationship with the principals at NBIF, and when you bring in outside investors you’re really welcoming them into your own home,” he said.

As well as rolling out the current incarnation of CxEngage, UserEvents is working on a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service model that will be attractive to mid-sized and some larger companies.

Thompson added that his group is adapting its core technology to new products. It is examining ways to help companies assess their employees’ interactions with customers in order to reward staff who are doing things well and correct those who aren’t.

It is also working on sensor network analytics.  Handheld devices produce actions without human interactions, and Thompson and his team believe there is a commercial benefit in mining that data to analyse human behavior.

Thompson previously launched Conseros, a tech company whose software improved the efficiency of large corporations’ back-office operations. In 2009, he exited that venture by selling out to Genesys, a subsidiary of phone equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent.

“Here is an example of a serial entrepreneur who knows how to find new opportunities through his already established successes,” NBIF Chair Robert Hatheway said about Thompson in a statement. “Two of the most important factors in making a venture capital investment is a solid revenue model and a stellar management team, both of which Thompson has brought together in a most impressive way.”

Thompson came up with the idea for UserEvents last year after he had problems booking a flight to Australia online. He teamed up with two programmers, Trevor Bernard and Robin Bate Boerop, who became the joint CTOs. By the summer they had a working model allowing a corporation to contact customers within two to three seconds of a problem occurring with the web experience.