Cisco is acquiring CX management firm CloudCherry

27 Aug 2019

Cisco's facility in Silicon Valley. Image: wolterke/Depositphotos

Cisco will acquire CloudCherry as part of its plans to form a new approach to work and productivity.

On Monday (26 August), US telecoms and networking hardware manufacturer Cisco announced its intention to acquire CloudCherry.

The company said that it is making the move to leverage cloud analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to boost agent productivity in the company’s contact centres. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In a statement on Cisco’s blog, the company said: “CloudCherry is a customer experience management (CEM) company that provides rich APIs, predictive analytics, and customer journey mapping with integrated sentiment analysis.

“With CloudCherry, we’re augmenting our contact centre portfolio with advanced analytics, rich customer journey mapping and sophisticated survey capabilities that all our customers can use – whether they’re using Webex Contact Center in the cloud, or our hosted and on-premises solutions.

“And with more than 17 integrated feedback channels available, CloudCherry can help us better understand and enrich the agent and employee experience as well.”

CloudCherry’s predictive analytics will enable agents to make modifications in real time, such as upselling and cross-selling, and enabling discounting or couponing to meet customer needs during each interaction.

New approach

Following the completed transaction, which Cisco expects to close in the first quarter of its 2020 fiscal year, the CloudCherry team will join Cisco. Until then, the two will continue functioning as separate companies.

Earlier this year, Cisco announced plans to form a new approach to work and productivity, which the company called Cognitive Collaboration.

This approach integrates intelligence and context throughout the company’s collaboration experiences. When Cisco shared its vision for Cognitive Collaboration back in March, the company hinted that it would be introducing new developments for its Contact Centre.

At the beginning of August, Cisco’s investment arm led an $8m funding round to finance the expansion of debugging start-up Rookout. At the time, Rookout said that the funding will go towards expanding its services beyond debugging.

Cisco’s facility in Silicon Valley. Image: wolterke/Depositphotos

Kelly Earley was a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com