Cisco Swallows CloudCherry to Fortify Contact Centre Portfolio
The legacy telephony market is being rapidly encroached on by a growing market of cloud-based calling systems.
Cisco, the tech giant known primarily for networking hardware, is a major player in the contact centre technology business, and is building up its cloud calling capabilities with the acquisition of cloud-based customer relationship management tool CloudCherry.
Utah-based CloudCherry extends the customer journey from traditional communications like email and calling to early and late stage contact methods including direct mail, online displays, surveys, and loyalty programs. Contact centre agents using the software are able to redirect customer journeys in real-time based on predictive analytics.
When the acquisition is completed in early 2020, the CloudCherry team will join Cisco’s Contact Centre Solutions sector, and the CloudCherry tech stack will be baked into Cisco’s new cognitive and collaborative contact centre, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide more personalised customer experiences.
“We’re thrilled to add CloudCherry’s market leading customer experience management technology to our collaboration portfolio” said Vasili Triant, vice president at Cisco Contact Centre Solutions. “This is the next step in realising our vision for cognitive collaboration in the contact center, enabling the delivery of the best, most personalised customer experiences, ultimately improving customer loyalty and lifetime value’.
As enterprise software becomes increasingly sophisticated, both back-end systems and customer-facing sectors like sales and support are being transformed.
Cisco is well known for using acquisition to stay ahead of technological trends, and the CloudCherry deal comes just three weeks after the purchase of Voicea Inc – a startup that has developed an artificially intelligent voice assistant for meetings.
Elsewhere, other companies are also striving to capitalise on the increased adoption of cloud-based calling services. AI-infused enterprise phone system Dialpad recently secured $120 million in funding from investors including Google and Andreessen Horowitz, and VoIP pioneer Vonage acquired cloud-based contact center startup NewVoiceMedia in September last year for $350M in cash.
