Contact centre giant Genesys has completed its acquisition of Altocloud, a provider of cloud-based customer journey analytics systems.
Genesys says the acquisition strengthens its capabilities in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Genesys says the additional of Altocloud will enable it to offer its enterprise customers new, more powerful functions.
The combined platform will “help organisations deliver a highly responsive, predictive, and fully-contextual experience throughout all stages of the customer journey – from marketing to sales to service”, says Genesys.
Paul Segre, chief executive officer of Genesys, says: “The acquisition of Altocloud bolsters our ability to optimise and connect the entire customer journey to ensure the best business outcomes. “We are particularly excited by applications, like Altocloud, which give organisations a live look into the behaviour of consumers and their potential as customers.
“By empowering employees with this depth of actionable insight, organisations are better positioned than ever to convert shoppers into buyers, leads into customers, and consumers into brand advocates.”
Genesys says Altocloud will strengthen its capability to engage and intervene in a customer’s journey at the right moment to drive a desired action, such as buying a product, registering for an event, or booking a trip. The company claims that current Altocloud customers have seen significant improvements to key business metrics including:
- A global provider of voice, video and content sharing solutions reduced cost-per-lead by 62 per cent and cost-per-chat by 72 per cent.
- A leading provider of wearable wireless sensor products and solutions increased customer engagement rates by nearly 80 per cent without additional sales or marketing staff.
- A leading online retailer realised a 30 per cent reduction in cart abandonment rates.
Nancy Jamison, principal analyst, ICT at Frost and Sullivan, says: “Every company today is wrestling with one immense challenge: how to dramatically increase the infinite potential of digital channels to engage customers in a way that produces more meaningful business results.
“Adding the innovative, field-proven Altocloud technology to the Genesys offering will exponentially drive businesses ability to gain insight into how and when to interact with customers. “Collectively, these are attractive differentiators that further solidify the Genesys leadership position within the customer experience industry.”
One of the new features of the combined Genesys-Altocloud systems is the ability to “score and predict a consumer’s journey in real-time across channels”, says the company. This can be done while they are live on a website, using a mobile app or in a conversation with an employee.
This is where AI and machine learning are brought into play, and they use pre-defined personas and past behaviour analysis to automatically predict consumer outcomes and give context to the customer’s journey. As a result, organisations can deliver the next-best action by the right employee for improved success rates, claims Genesys.
Barry O’Sullivan, Altocloud chief executive officer, says: “We built Altocloud because we saw a more dynamic way to drive better business results by taking advantage of the power and potential of AI. “We are excited to join a proven customer experience innovator and AI leader like Genesys, so we can extend the reach of our revolutionary journey management technology even further to help thousands of companies across the globe through hyper-personalised, digitally-connected experiences.”
Genesys is likely to continue with its “Blended AI” project, which aims to provide AI with human characteristics. This has so far resulted in the virtual assistant “Kate”, the personification of Genesys AI, automation and machine learning, “who helps customers and live agents solve problems faster and more efficiently”, according to the company. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
