Customer survey management company Mindshare Technologies Inc. said it has raised $20 million from private equity firm Sorenson Capital to help companies keep customers in an age of abundant consumer choices.

The eight-year-old company has been bootstrapped until now, except for some money from friends and family early in its history, said Richard Hanks, its president and chairman. An undisclosed portion of the capital will be used to cash out some of its early investors; the rest will be used to grow the business.

PrivateBank & Trust Co. provided the company with a line of credit in addition to the equity.

Mindshare specializes in providing companies with immediate feedback.
Rather than filing the results of customer surveys into spreadsheets and averaging out the results for the corporate office, Mindshare pushes customer feedback to multiple levels of an organization.

For example, if a customer in a fast-food restaurant uses the survey website on the receipt to complain that the burgers are cold, the results are sent to the corporate office as part of a report, but also in a text message to the store's manager telling him to check the heat lamp.

Salt Lake City-based Mindshare expects to have almost $19 million in revenue this year, a 40% increase from the previous year, and is extremely profitable, Hanks said. It has seen 100 consecutive months of revenue growth, including $1.6 million generated in August, he said. The company was "bombarded" by private equity firms and narrowed the field down to three before choosing Sorenson Capital, he said.

The company has customers in more than 25 different industries, including retail, financial services, travel, automotive and health care. Its customers include Arby's Restaurant Group, Hertz Corp. and Comcast Corp.

The company's competition is mostly comment cards, mystery shopping and market research, but Hanks said all those things take time and just generate averages around customer satisfaction, rather than helping businesses know when particular customers are dissatisfied and how to react to limit that number.

The old way of managing customer feedback isn't adequate anymore because customers have so many options for every service, Hanks said. "In my parents' day, nobody ever fired their bank," he said. "Good enough isn't good enough anymore because I have so many choices."

Fraser Bullock and Ron Mika, both managing directors with Sorenson Capital, will join the company's board as a result of the round. Representatives of the firm didn't respond to a request for comment.

About Mindshare Technologies
Mindshare drives operational improvement. Using Mindshare, companies improve operational excellence, foster consumer satisfaction, build customer loyalty, and support employee retention. Our industry experts guide clients in building comprehensive enterprise feedback management (EFM) solutions. Mindshare's proprietary survey technology captures the voice of the customer in real-time and immediately transforms it into actionable intelligence through powerful and incisive reporting. Mindshare serves more than 25 different industries including travel, hospitality, restaurant, financial, salon, automotive, and retail. For information, visit www.mshare.net.