Last year, Pylon, a young San Francisco-based startup, was just trying to build and launch its product with a fresh $3.2 million seed investment in its pocket. This product would help companies track, manage, and route B2B customer conversations in channels like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord.

However, the company found that this approach was not enough in the B2B market, so last year it expanded its mission to include features such as ticketing, chatbots and traditional channels such as email to begin building a customer communication services platform.

This approach seems to be resonating with customers, as the company announced a $17 million Series A on Wednesday.

Marty Kausas, CEO and co-founder of Pylon, says they quickly realized that the company’s omnichannel approach was originally just a first step and that customers were demanding more.

“When we last spoke, we were just starting to establish ourselves as a support tool, and so one of the things we had noticed was that companies were starting to communicate with their (business) customers through shared Slack channels and Microsoft Teams instead of email,” Kausas told TechCrunch.

“But it made me realize that it’s not just this omnichannel thing that’s a problem. There’s actually a bigger opportunity to unify everything that B2B teams need. And omnichannel monitoring was just one part of that.”

For a while, the trend was for companies to buy the best SaaS solution available, but over time this became a real problem for the IT department. Companies are increasingly looking for a single provider to handle everything.

“But it turns out that most of these companies were buying a ticketing system like Zendesk, a customer success platform like Gainsight. They were buying AI support bots. They were buying separate knowledge base products – and it turns out they should all be part of a single tool,” he said.

Kausas says his team has gone to work adding these parts, and while he admits their initial efforts probably won’t be able to compete with these products that have been on the market for years, it helps attract customers who don’t want to deal with maintaining all those tools. He says the company will improve its offerings over time.

The approach seems to be working. Pylon has been able to increase its number of customers from a handful last year to around 250. The number of employees has increased from five last year to 14 currently – and several positions are currently being advertised.

He says that unlike many startups, he now creates an office-only atmosphere for his employees. He has leased space in San Francisco (right next to the original TechCrunch offices) with room to expand to 100 employees. He requires his employees to work in the office, and he says that so far, at least, candidates have been drawn back to working in the office. “One thing I’d like to mention: I think a lot of companies are trying to transition to remote work these days. One thing that’s unique about us is that we’re completely in-person,” he said.

The $17 million investment was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from existing investors General Catalyst, Y Combinator and other unnamed private investors. The company has now raised over $20 million.