After working for her father’s outsource call center space, Lauren Wilson became familiar with workplace dynamics. Most of the workers were African Americans and parents.
Also, a sizable number of them were women and single mothers. However, due to a lack of flexibility in work hours, she often saw scheduling challenges. Calling off work on a daily basis usually led to a productivity loss for the company.
She, therefore, became interested in solving high absenteeism from a business perspective. This led her to start ImIn Inc., a staffing software platform to help the call center industry by enabling employees to meet their weekly minimums with flexibility.
The platform works by providing businesses with a way to effectively communicate with their staff, track wages and performance and reward users. The Atlanta-based entrepreneur launched the platform at the height of the pandemic so as to boost confidence in remote work.
“It has features where staff can be provided flexibility by reaching 40 hours through working a flexible schedule throughout the week or it allows employers to cover shrinkage or gaps due to absenteeism through making unfilled hours available to an available workforce that works a minimum of 10 to 15 hours per week,” she told Ebony.
Wilson piloted the project in 2021 with some 60 workers and over the period of eight months, she made $830,000 in revenue and got back around 30,000 hours of productivity for companies, according to bizjournals.com.
So far, the company employs six people. Besides an in-house development team, there is a product management role, a sales representative and Wilson. Also, three of the workers are in the U.S. while the other three are based in Portugal and India.
Six months before starting her company, ImIn raised a $1 million seed round from Atlanta-based Collab Capital, which prioritizes investment in Black startups. The money will be used to hire more workers and focus on go-to-market strategies.
The company generates revenue based on a subscription where a fee is charged to a company per license per month. So far, the startup has licenses for 600 user employees and Wilson is aiming to grow to 1,500 licenses by the end of the year.
According to bizjournals.com, the U.S. has some 500,000 call customer service agents. Wilson believes her company could grow by focusing solely on the industry while exploring opportunities to expand into other sectors like retail and fast food.
