AI player Genesys to buy Bold360 to enhance customer experience

16 Mar 2021

Image: © NicoElNino/Stock.adobe.com

Genesys said the acquisition will enable it to help companies deliver the ‘next frontier’ of digital customer experience.

AI company Genesys, which has bases in Galway and California, has announced its intention to acquire Bold360 from software player LogMeIn.

The proposed acquisition is set to advance Genesys’s customer experience services, helping companies to understand and predict customer behaviour with AI and data analytics. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2021.

Genesys sells customer experience and call centre technology to mid-sized and large businesses. Bold360 is a live chat engagement and AI tool currently owned by SaaS company LogMeIn.

By uniting Bold360’s capabilities with the Genesys’s AI and data platform, Genesys said it will be able to help companies deliver the “next frontier of digital customer experience” across any part of their business or channel.

Genesys CEO and chair Tony Bates said the positive market reaction to experience-as-a-service technology reflects how companies are looking for ways to engage their customers.

“Many realise they’re missing an opportunity to establish more human-level connections with their customers across every engagement on any channel,” he said.

“With Bold360, we’re aiming to transform digital into rich, dynamic personalised experiences companies and their customers will love.”

LogMeIn’s president and CEO, Bill Wagner, said Bold360 supports more than 1bn interactions every year.

“We’re confident that Genesys is the right owner to unlock Bold360’s full potential moving forward, as we focus our investments and innovations on enabling growing businesses to be productive, collaborative and secure in this new work-from-anywhere world through our other market-leading products,” he added.

Genesys established its R&D centre in Galway in 2018 following the acquisition of AI start-up Altocloud, which was founded by Irish entrepreneurs Barry O’Sullivan and Joe Smyth as well as US-based Dan Arra.

O’Sullivan now serves as executive vice-president and general manager for Genesys’s digital and AI unit, which Bold360 will join once the acquisition is complete.

At the beginning of this year, Genesys announced plans to expand its Galway site, creating 100 new jobs.

Jenny Darmody is the editor of Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com