BSL and Sabio adding customer experience depth

Business Systems (BSL) has made its first acquisition under the ownership of August private equity as it looks to expand in the customer experience market.

The channel player has picked up Acrinax for an undisclosed sum, adding a business that comes with expertise around contact centre as a Service (CCaaS) and workforce engagement management technologies.

The firm has also developed its own tool called Acrinax Chat, which is a real-time translation offering that is being used by its global customer base.

The deal will see the Acrinax management team – Damian Bowen, David Baughan and Andrew Jacobs, who all have a background at NTT Data – joining the BSL leadership team.

Adam Kantor, CEO of BSL, said that it would be adding in the Acrinax offerings to its cloud contact centre and workforce engagement practices to add more depth to the technology it could put in front of customers.

“Joining forces with Acrinax is a logical step for us and brings additional depth to what we can offer to our customers as they look to transform their contact centres with best-of-breed solutions,” he said.

He also indicated that this first acquisition was unlikely to be the last: “This was a strategic decision for us, and we will continue to look for selective acquisitions that bring unique strengths and accelerate our growth journey.”

In response, Damian Bowen, director of Acrinax, said that it would be able to offer benefits to BSL as well as its customers.

“The coming together of Acrinax with BSL will enable us to deliver even more strategic and transformational contact centre solutions to our combined customers. Migrating to the cloud is at the top of their priority list, and this partnership will enable us to deliver this strategic transformation for all of them,” he said.

Meanwhile, another firm keen to use acquisition as a means of deepening its customer experience skills is Sabio, which has picked up Fonetic, a Spanish provider of cloud-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) voicebots, chatbots and customer behaviour analytics solutions. The deal comes just a week after the firm purchased UK Salesforce consultancy Makepositive.

“We’re now at the stage where it’s reasonable to expect that almost every customer interaction will soon be fronted by AI in some shape or form, and that AI-enabled capabilities are poised to transform customer experience,” said Sabio’s CEO Jonathan Gale.

“With its proven voicebot, chatbot, customer behaviour analytics and visualisation capabilities, Fonetic directly addresses this challenge. The company not only brings an incredibly talented team, but valuable expertise in CX [customer experience] digital transactions that will be an important addition to Sabio’s own IP portfolio,” he added.

In response, Juan Manuel Soto, Fonetic’s CEO and founder, said that the technology had a proven value for customers.

“At Fonetic, we can demonstrate how our voicebots and chatbots perform at scale. This helps our clients to digitally transform their customer engagement by increasing CX efficiencies, while also securing significant increases in customer satisfaction,” he said.

“As part of the Sabio Group, we can bring our voicebot and chatbot offering to a much broader market, especially as AI and automation adoption in the CX sector is set to accelerate exponentially.”