Future Tech
Zendesk | January 08, 2024
Zendesk today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Klaus, the industry leading AI-powered quality management platform. AI is driving a rapid increase in customer interactions and radically transforming the world of customer service. Customer service teams are being asked to increase their ROI by managing a rising volume of interactions while providing quality service, and increasing their organization's efficiency in the process. With Klaus, Zendesk customers will be able to deliver consistent, high quality service across every channel and across both human and digital agents (bots) – all while unlocking the power of everyday customer interactions to increase loyalty.
"As AI drives up the speed and frequency of customer engagement, only AI-powered quality assurance (QA) can keep up as companies work to identify and fix gaps in their customer service operations," said Adrian McDermott, chief technology officer, Zendesk. "The combination of Zendesk AI and Klaus' capabilities will help businesses navigate greater complexity and volume and ensure both digital and human agents deliver highly personal and empathetic service."
"Zendesk and Klaus share a vision of AI-led, personalized CX with businesses fully anticipating and acting on their customers' needs," said Martin Kõiva, CEO and founder, Klaus. "QA software plays a critical role in this, ensuring consistency, assessing both human and digital agent performance and providing actionable insights for strategic planning. As part of Zendesk, we will continue to build and deliver these crucial capabilities, but now at an even greater scale."
With digital agents resolving more service inquiries without human interaction, having a QA solution that analyzes both human and digital agent performance is crucial to maintaining quality control and providing best-in-class customer service. While most QA software is capable of only scoring 1 to 2 percent of interactions and cannot recognize systemic trends, Klaus' AI scores 100 percent of customer support interactions. It pinpoints conversations with positive or negative sentiment, identifies outliers, churn risk, escalations and follow-ups across all conversations – even those done by digital agents or outsourced teams. Klaus spots knowledge gaps and coaching opportunities that can be used to improve agent performance and productivity, all of which results in higher customer satisfaction.
WEM is a critical capability for today's customer service leaders. The acquisition of Klaus will be the latest addition to the company's existing workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions which includes Tymeshift, a modern workforce management tool built exclusively for Zendesk. The company acquired Tymeshift in June 2023. The acquisition of Klaus is anticipated to close in the first quarter of 2024 upon receipt of required regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
About Zendesk
Zendesk is on a mission to simplify the complexity of business and make it easy for companies and customers to create connections. Our customer experience software unlocks the power of billions of interactions, enabling businesses to build rich, meaningful relationships with their customers. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark and today operates in more than 20 countries around the world.
About Klaus
Klaus is an AI-powered quality management platform that helps companies drive revenue through excellent customer service. Headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, Klaus was founded in 2018 by Martin Kõiva, Kair Käsper and Egon Sale and has nearly 100 employees.
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Software
ON24 | January 24, 2024
Today, ON24 marks the next chapter of its innovation strategy with the launch of its next generation intelligent engagement platform. With AI-powered intelligence at the core, ON24 will now enable enterprises to continuously engage audiences through hyper-personalized experiences that deliver connected insights and drive cost-efficient revenue growth.
“AI will fundamentally reshape sales and marketing and reimagine the customer experience. This means that sales and marketing teams must embrace AI to innovate and adapt, or risk being left behind,” says Sharat Sharan, co-founder, President and CEO. “With the launch of the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform, we are excited to leverage our unique foundation of first-party data to give our industry-leading customers an AI advantage, so that they can combine best-in-class experiences, personalization and content, to capture and act on connected data and insights at scale to drive revenue growth. And, we believe AI will continue to be a key differentiation for our own business and technology strategy moving forward, powering a new era of intelligent engagement.”
Built on its foundation of first-party data, the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform combines best-in-class digital experiences, including the company’s flagship webinar, virtual event and content marketing products, with its new AI-powered Analytics and Content Engine (ACE) to provide an integrated go-to-market solution. The platform’s comprehensive set of capabilities will help sales and marketing teams to:
Scale personalized experiences: Build best-in-class, branded experiences that reach their prospects and customers at scale and are hyper-personalized for individuals.
Automate continuous engagement: Interact with prospects and customers 24/7 through AI-generated content and always-on nurtures.
Deliver connected insights: Track audience engagement data across interactions and analyze engagement across key audience segments.
Drive revenue growth: Enable data-driven actions across go-to-market teams to generate pipeline and build lifetime customer relationships.
“Today’s launch of the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform brings our AI innovation together with more than a decade of market leadership, product development and first-party engagement data,” said Jayesh Sahasi, EVP of Product and CTO at ON24. “We believe this will unlock even greater value for our customers, providing AI-powered intelligence that keeps getting smarter, more personalized and more effective over time."
About ON24
ON24 is on a mission to help businesses bring their go-to-market strategy into the AI era and drive cost-effective revenue growth. Through its leading intelligent engagement platform, ON24 enables customers to combine best-in-class experiences with personalization and content, to capture and act on connected insights at scale.
ON24 provides industry-leading companies, including 3 of the 5 largest global technology companies, 3 of the 5 top global asset management firms, 3 of the 5 largest global healthcare companies and 3 of the 5 largest global industrial companies, with a valuable source of first-party data to drive sales and marketing innovation, improve efficiency and increase business results. Headquartered in San Francisco, ON24 has offices globally in North America, EMEA and APAC. For more information, visit www.ON24.com.
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Software
Lynx Software Technologies | January 10, 2024
Lynx Software Technologies (Lynx), a leader in the development of foundational, open architecture software solutions for the Mission Critical Edge, today announced the acquisition of Thompson Software Solutions, LLC. (TSS), a provider of software development, engineering, and integration solutions to mission-critical aerospace and defense (A&D) platforms, spanning military and commercial fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, commercial space flight, hypersonic platforms, and command-and-control systems. Its customers include the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), prime integrators, A&D original equipment manufacturers, and commercial space companies.
Since its founding in 2004, TSS has delivered technical capabilities and strategic insights to enable innovative software products requiring the highest reliability, security, and performance standards. With expertise spanning high-integrity software architecture and development, DevSecOps, cybersecurity, airworthiness certifications, open systems architecture, simulation and training, and AI and machine learning, customers across the A&D end-markets rely upon TSS to provide strategic guidance, differentiated technical capabilities, and a deep understanding of mission requirements. TSS’s Chief Executive Officer, Les Thompson, and Chief Strategy Officer, Patrick McClellen, have taken on senior roles within Lynx following the close of the transaction.
The combination of Lynx and TSS creates a scaled provider of mission-critical software solutions for customers with complex interoperability, safety, and security challenges. Lynx’s foundational software products, open-source expertise, productivity- and security-enhancing development tools, highly technical software engineering services, delivered via both professional and managed services business models, and its highly skilled and security-cleared employee base combine to create a platform company uniquely positioned to support the full software development lifecycle for clients in aerospace, defense, and other heavily regulated end-markets.
“The TSS team has built the company on a solid foundation of trusted customer relationships, innovative and cutting-edge technical capabilities, and flawless execution. With TSS’s high-value and differentiated software development and integration capabilities, we will be better equipped to enable aerospace and defense OEMs and prime integrators to accelerate the design, development, and deployment of their products and platforms,” commented Tim Reed, Chief Executive Officer of Lynx. “As we end 2023, Lynx’s portfolio of solutions spans from the operating system to the application layer, certifiable real-time, to general purpose and open-source, and from commercial-off-the-shelf (“COTS”) to government-off-the-shelf (“GOTS”) software products. I’m thrilled to work with Les and the TSS team as we continue delivering comprehensive and unique software-enabled solutions to customers whose needs extend from the development pipeline to the Mission Critical Edge.”
“Throughout my twenty years leading TSS, we’ve been consistently committed to delivering robust software solutions that meet the stringent requirements of our customers while ensuring they can stay on schedule and budget,” commented Les Thompson, Chief Executive Officer of TSS. “From our first discussions with Tim and the Lynx team, it became clear that Lynx is not just a vendor looking to push products but a committed, mission-oriented partner with the same objectives we have here at TSS, which includes continuing to deliver on our shared goal of providing resilient, secure, and performant software solutions targeted at the most demanding mission-critical environments.”
“The combination of Lynx and TSS creates a software solutions platform placed at the center of priority aerospace and defense investment areas, notably open standards, modularity, and security. Like TSS, Lynx has an established track record of exceeding customer expectations with its innovation, performance, and value proposition. As a combined company, Lynx and TSS are well-positioned to grow as our clients continue to execute on the software modernization, integration, and development priorities,” commented Patrick McClellen, Chief Strategy Officer of TSS.
About Lynx Software Technologies
Lynx Software Technologies is on a mission to improve the economics of developing, deploying, and maintaining high-assurance Mission Critical Edge platforms with modular software solutions based on open standards. Our proven technology leadership, extensive system certification expertise, and commitment to open standards have consistently saved our customers millions of dollars in development costs while delivering desired system performance, security, and reliability on schedule. Lynx is committed to enabling customers to build and manage orchestrated, cloud-connected platforms that harness a broad array of modern technologies and unique design methodologies to enable accurate, deterministic decisions at the Mission Critical Edge without compromising safety or cybersecurity requirements. For more information, visit www.lynx.com.
About Thompson Software Solutions
Founded in 2004 with locations in Atlanta, GA and Fort Worth, TX, the Thompson Software Solutions team understands what is required to develop, integrate, test, and deploy software with a safety-critical pedigree while meeting the challenges of modernization and digital transformation. Our team of proven and dedicated employees takes pride in our ability to react quickly and produce quality solutions to difficult technical challenges. We work with partners to find the right path to meet operational needs while future-proofing systems with portability and sustainment considerations to ensure next-generation success. For more information, visit https://www.thompsonsoftwaresolutions.com.
About OceanSound Partners
OceanSound Partners is a New York-based private equity firm that pursues control investments in technology and technology-enabled services companies serving government and enterprise end markets. OceanSound employs a partnership approach, working closely with founders, entrepreneurs, and executives of middle market businesses to drive transformational growth. For more information, visit www.oceansoundpartners.com.
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