TTEC Holdings, which provides Customer Experience as a Service (CXaaS), has acquired Amazon Web Services partner VoiceFoundery. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is M&A deal 321 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2020. See the full M&A deal list here.
The deal will create an end-to-end CX delivery solution for Amazon Connect, TTEC explained. The United States and European portions of the acquisition have already closed, while the Australian and ASEAN parts of the deal are expected to close pending regulatory approvals, the company said.
Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and with offices in the UK, Singapore, and Australia, VoiceFoundry’s expertise is focused on artificial intelligence 9AI) and natural language automation, chatbots, user-experience design, and analytics, among others.
TTEC Holdings says VoiceFoundry is an industry leader in deploying Amazon Connect along with other AWS services that focus on creating intelligent interactions across all engagement channels. The acquisition adds over 50 blue-chip companies to TTEC's global account base, primarily in the public sector, e-commerce, financial services, travel, healthcare, and insurance industries.
VoiceFoundry CEO John Marino will join TTEC as Group Vice President of the company’s AWS practice, the company said.
TTEC’s VoiceFoundery Acquisition: Executive Insight
Marino commented on the deal:
"In TTEC we found the perfect partner for delivering end-to-end CX solutions that allow us to better design, build and operate amazing customer and employee experiences for clients at large enterprise scale. Our combined strengths help enhance the overall offering to our customers. TTEC adds depth to our managed services accounts without slowing down the speed at which VoiceFoundry can implement Amazon Connect, which is one of AWS's fastest-growing services."
Jonathan Lerner, president of TTEC Digital, added:
"There is a fundamental shift happening across the industry. Rather than relying directly on customer experience SaaS providers, clients are turning to CX orchestrators and journey partners to build end-to-end customer-centric solutions in the cloud. VoiceFoundry's addition to TTEC Digital provides speed, agility, and expands our CX Marketplace with AWS's cloud-first solutions that can accelerate digital CX transformation for our clients."
The Growth of Amazon Connect
Amazon Connect was launched in 2017 as AWS looked to break into the contact center, help desk, and service desk markets.
The service is a cloud-based contact center that allows customers to take calls and avoid disrupting established CRM, help desk, and IT service desk systems.
The goal of Amazon Connect was to create a service that could be embedded into the applications that customer agents already use. The service integrates with other major offerings including Salesforce, Zendesk, Zoho, and more. Early adopters included GE Appliances, Bandwidth, and AnswerConnect.