Genesys, a leading provider of customer engagement and contact center solutions, announced on Oct. 8 that it reached a definitive agreement to acquire Echopass Corp. – which will add to the 1,250 existing Genesys cloud customers and establish Genesys as the “clear market leader in cloud-based contact centers.”
The acquisition directly addresses the needs of enterprises that are experiencing both dynamic changes and tremendous customer engagement opportunities. Today, customer experience has never been more strategic to a company’s differentiation as consumers select companies to do business with based on their reputation for customer service. Enterprises are adopting cloud contact center solutions to bring rapid innovation and flexibility to customer interaction channels, especially as consumers’ engagement preferences evolve, and to gain greater efficiencies from internal teams that support the customer experience. They also want the choice between shifting entirely to the cloud—or extending their on-premises system—while maintaining a full suite of enterprise-class solutions and security.
Paul Segre, President and CEO of Genesys, told Loyalty 360 that in the past nine months his company has “aggressively” grown its cloud-based contact center offerings through three acquisitions: Soundbite, Angel, and now Echopass.
“Echopass brings us a powerful solution for sophisticated cloud-based contact centers designed for large enterprises that perfectly complements our other cloud solutions,” Segre said. “Echopass is widely considered a market leader in this space, controlling more than one-fifth of the hosted Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) market, according to Frost and Sullivan. By making this move, Genesys can now take the cloud-based contact center market leadership flag. The bottom line is that now we have a full suite of cloud-based contact center offerings for companies of all sizes that are unmatched in the industry.”
Genesys was one of Echopass’ original investors, Segre said, and Echopass has been a close Genesys partner for the past 13 years.
“In fact, we share dozens of Fortune 500 customers who are running Genesys solutions in the cloud right now,” Segre explained. “For Genesys customers and prospects, this acquisition means three things. First, we will offer Echopass solutions—Genesys cloud solutions—to large enterprises through our robust sales and partner network in North America. Second, Echopass brings deep operational expertise about how to run Genesys solutions from the cloud. Third, and most importantly, we know that enterprises now require the flexibility to decide whether to run their customer contact center platforms on-premise, in the cloud, or with a hybrid approach. Genesys can now deliver on whichever configuration is best to help organizations create winning experiences to consumers.”
Echopass brings over a decade of expertise delivering the Genesys platform in the cloud. Earlier this year, Genesys launched a new, comprehensive portfolio of cloud solutions for contact centers and customer engagement. Genesys cloud solutions for small and mid-sized organizations are designed for simplicity and rapid deployment, while contact center solutions for Enterprises are highly scalable and customized.
Segre said that the contact center has been one of the last holdouts for moving to the cloud, primarily because of the complexity that running customer service entails, and because of security concerns.
“That has prevented organizations from responding quickly to the customer experience demands, challenges, and opportunities that all businesses face,” Segre explained. “Savvy companies understand that delivering top-notch products and services are not the only factors that differentiate them. What transforms consumers from buyers into active promoters is an exceptional customer experience, regardless of whether that interaction is in a store, online, on the phone, on a mobile device, through social media, or beyond. While those channels are rapidly evolving, consumer expectations are at an all-time high. These trends put tremendous pressure on companies to bring rapid innovation and flexibility to customer interaction channels. The best way to address this is to innovate with the customer experience -- which has been difficult given the complexities of operationalizing customer service in the enterprise.”
With more than 3,500 customers in 80 countries, Genesys orchestrates more than 100 million customer interactions every day across the contact center and back office, helping companies deliver fast and optimal levels of customer service with a highly personalized cross-channel customer experience. Genesys also prioritizes the flow of work to back office personnel resulting from any customer interaction, internal workflow or business application, optimizing the performance and satisfaction of customer-facing employees across the enterprise.
Echopass clients are among the largest cloud contact center deployments in the world with complex client environments that are deploying greater than 8,000 agents across multiple contact center locations, all served from a common platform with a virtualized and seamless solution. The broad range of applications offered by Echopass includes support for multiple customer engagement channels including voice, chat, email, fax, SMS, and mobile, as well agent performance optimization capabilities and extensive customer experience enhancement solutions.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2013.