San Francisco-based Talkdesk also hired its first chief financial officer, Sydney Carey, who had been CFO at Sumo Logic Inc., a cloud-based data and analytics company. Talkdesk plans to devote the new funding to purposes including research and development and adding executives and other staff, said Chief Executive Tiago Paiva. "It is really to be able to spend more time with customers, build more products, and also make sure we have the team ready to support them internationally," Mr. Paiva said. Talkdesk is part of a growing industry called contact-center-as-a-service, in which companies apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance clients' customer service and customer experience. Such cloud-based contact center software also makes it easier for call-center agents to work from anywhere, as opposed to monitoring calls physically on a company's data and communication network in onsite offices.