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Anywhere365 Announces Strategic Growth Investment From Bregal Milestone

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December 20, 2019

Anywhere365 Announces Strategic Growth Investment From Bregal Milestone

Major Investment to Accelerate anywhere365’s Next Phase of Growth and Solidify Its Leading Position in the Rapidly Expanding Enterprise Dialogue Management Market

Anywhere365, a leading Contact Center and Enterprise Dialogue Management solution provider, announced that it has received a strategic investment of €40 million from Bregal Milestone, a pan-European growth capital firm. Anywhere365 will leverage Bregal Milestone’s strategic support and capital to accelerate its expansion through both organic growth and buy-and-build activities. The investment by Bregal Milestone is the sixth transaction out of its €400 million fund and marks the first transaction in the Netherlands.

The founder of Anywhere365, Gijs Geurts, will retain a majority interest in the Company. “I am delighted by this collaboration that will enable further growth,” Geurts stated. “Bregal Milestone sees the potential of Anywhere365, given our track record of profitable growth of our on-premise and cloud-based Enterprise Dialogue Management solutions for Microsoft-centric contact center applications, as well as managing critical messaging and notifications from IoT devices.”

Anywhere365 is an omnichannel Contact Center and Enterprise Dialogue Management platform that streamlines communications for global companies with complex customer service needs. It has more than 1,000 customers in 54 countries, including multinationals such as Philips, Royal Dutch Shell, Rabobank, Société Générale, Nestlé and specialized enterprises such as Swarovski, DHL and USG People. The Company is most known for its global Anywhere365 Dialogue Cloud, which uses AI, machine learning and Microsoft Azure to assess, route, and translate customer inquiries on all channels (web, chat, email, voice). By replacing legacy communications systems, Anywhere365 Dialogue Cloud drives higher customer satisfaction and increases workforce productivity. Anywhere365 maximizes the use of Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams and Direct Routing for Cloud Contact Centers and can be natively embedded within CRM and ITSM platforms, such as Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, and ServiceNow.

“We are proud to partner with Anywhere365 for this next phase of growth,” said Cyrus Shey, a Managing Partner at Bregal Milestone. “With its flexible suite of applications and deep integration with Microsoft, we believe Anywhere365 is well positioned to capture this large and compelling market opportunity. We look forward to working with Gijs and his ambitious team to further develop their business and drive profitable growth.”

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MINI Australia Chooses Reevoo to Drive Brand Advocacy

Sales Engagement

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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MINI Australia has partnered with Reevoo, the customer reviews and engagement platform, to provide prospective customers with impartial ratings and experiences from MINI owners via its new website.

Celebrating its 60^th birthday this year, the BMW-owned brand joins over 25 other automotive companies that have chosen to extend honest and unedited reviews to their online audiences through Reevoo’s solution.

Alex McLean, Head of Marketing at MINI Australia & New Zealand, said: “Over the past 18 months we’ve been working closely with Reevoo to put together a strategic approach to sharing the experiences of MINI owners, culminating in our new website. We believe the quality of our cars is second to none, so having the opportunity to use our customers as brand advocates – to tell others about the joy they get from driving their MINI – is extremely valuable to us.”

Reevoo invites verified owners to give their MINI an overall rating, along with scores for specific facets of the car and positive or negative comments about the vehicle experience. Once published on the website, these responses can help improve search engine results making it easier for prospective buyers to see the opinions of existing owners.

Lisa Ashworth, CEO at Reevoo, said: “We’re delighted to be working with such an iconic brand as MINI to help educate its key audiences about their prospective purchasing decisions. Buying a car is one of the most expensive items you’ll make in your lifetime, and with 92% of vehicle owners reading customer reviews before making that purchase, it’s imperative the information they receive is authentic, unbiased and from an independent provider.”

Due to the partnership’s success so far, Reevoo has also extended its services to MINI New Zealand, helping to enrich the online research phase for those considering a MINI as their next car. And with the recently released MINI 60 Years Edition and the new emissions-free MINI Cooper SE electric car on the horizon, it has never been more important for the brand to find new ways to engage with and excite its audience.

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Fluent.ai Announces New CEO and Board Member to Accelerate Company Growth

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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Fluent.ai Announces New CEO and Board Member to Accelerate Company Growth

The Speech Recognition Company AIMS to Voice Enable the World’s Devices Using Advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Fluent.ai, a Canadian technology company that offers a range of artificial intelligence (AI) voice interface software products to OEMs and service providers, announced the addition of sales and operations veteran Probal Lala as its permanent CEO and technology veteran, David Bernardi, to its board.

Probal Lala, a telecom executive turned serial technology entrepreneur and investor, was recently named permanent CEO to further grow the company and expand Fluent.ai’s technology solutions worldwide. Prior to this position, Lala has been an active Angel Investor for the past 12 years as Chair of the Maple Leaf Angels Corporation. With more than 30 years of leadership experience across the technology industry, Lala has held a range of diverse senior executive roles, including CEO of About Communications, Vice President Sales at Alcatel-Lucent Canada, CEO of AirRoamer, Vice President and General Manager Internet Operations at Bell Canada, and General Manager and Chief Technology Officer at Stentor Services Inc. He brings a breadth of experience to the table that will help the company grow in 2020.

“I am thrilled to join such a talented team at Fluent.ai as we challenge conventional speech recognition solutions with an innovative approach that offers more robust embedded speech recognition in any language,” said Lala. “The AI voice interface market will continue to grow in 2020 as people expect the devices and technology they interact with every day to understand them regardless of their language, accent or environment, and I’m excited to further establish Fluent.ai as an industry leader in this market.”

Fluent.ai also welcomes David Bernardi to its board. Bernardi is currently the CTO of Telesystem, a family holding company that has a history of building technology companies from the ground up. David brings 30 years of experience in product development, project management, venture capital, and technology company governance. Joining his first board in 2002, he has since been a director of more than a dozen companies, including NASDAQ-listed Broadsoft (sold to Cisco in 2018). In addition to his role on the Fluent.ai board, David is currently a board member of Averna Technologies, CVTCORP, NorthStar Earth and Space, Telesat and is the Chairman of university incubator Centech.

“I wanted to work alongside the Fluent.ai team because I believe in its vision for changing the way people use speech technology to interact with their smart devices in real time,” said Bernardi. “Fluent.ai has a bright future – I believe it will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible with AI and voice recognition technology.”

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EFI Reduced Incoming Customer Calls by 64% in 2019 via Enhanced Customer Engagement Tools

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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EFI Reduced Incoming Customer Calls by 64% in 2019 via Enhanced Customer Engagement Tools

EFI, an Industry leader in utility-branded marketplaces and omni-channel instant rebate technology, partners with utilities nationwide to offer energy-efficient products to eligible participating customers. With the online marketplace solution, EFI includes white-glove customer support with a suite of solutions including a dedicated call center, email assistance, and live chat.

EFI saw phone calls to their US based call center drop by 64% as a direct result of technology enhancements and customer engagement tools on their online marketplace(s). “In 2019, website redesign and user experience improvements were the spark to innovative engagement tactics,” Jonathan Coons, Director of Marketing at EFI, stated. He went on to explain how the new structure included a live chat integration, which supported the majority of customers needing immediate assistance online and increased EFI’s overall Net Promoter Score (NPS) to 82.

“We’ve been able to see an incredible shift on the online marketplace based on our enhanced customer engagement techniques, digital content, and integrated marketing. From buyers’ guides to A+ content to improved program implementation – it’s been a huge improved solution for EFI and our utility clients,” said Jonathan. “Although the phone calls have decreased significantly, we know there’s always a demographic that appreciates and may require voice assistance. We aren’t planning on eliminating this service – we are simply improving it.”

EFI hopes to see NPS scores increase for both EFI and their clients while phone calls continue to decrease as they implement additional strategies in 2020.

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Nielsen Names New Chief Human Resources Officer, Laurie Lovett

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December 20, 2019

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Nielsen Names New Chief Human Resources Officer, Laurie Lovett

Lovett Will Run the Global Function for the Nielsen Global Media business Taft Elevated in Finance Role

Nielsen named Laurie Lovett, a three-decade human resources veteran as Chief Human Resources Officer effective January 13, 2020. In addition, the company announced that effective immediately, Christopher Taft will become Controller and Chief Accounting Officer.

Lovett will run the Human Resources function for the Nielsen Global Media business and will remain with that business after the completion of the separation of the two businesses. Previously she spent over 20 years with Accenture holding various leadership roles. She then moved on to Verisk Analytics as the Global Chief Human Resources Officer where she led the full scope of talent, diversity, human resources, and organizational development activities.

“We are thrilled to welcome Laurie to Nielsen. Her ability to apply best in class HR solutions while building a talent culture and guiding others to become great leaders and managers will help us to supercharge the next era of the Nielsen Global Media business,” commented David Kenny, CEO, Nielsen.

“After having spent some time with the teams at Nielsen, I am thrilled to join this smart and dedicated group. The company is in the midst of an exciting transformation which makes for a wonderful opportunity. I am thrilled to build on the current momentum of this terrific business,” said Lovett.

Christopher Taft has spent over a decade working in various Controller roles at the General Electric Company and at Nielsen. Prior to that, he worked in the assurance and advisory services group at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. He has been acting Controller for 10 months. He will add the Chief Accounting Officer duties to his remit.

“Chris brings a great understanding of our businesses to this role and will provide terrific insight as we move to separate the company into two publicly traded entities later in 2020,” said Kenny.

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Instreamatic and Gaana Partner to Introduce Dialogue Advertising to More Than 110 Million Monthly Streaming Music Listeners

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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Instreamatic and Gaana Partner to Introduce Dialogue Advertising to More Than 110 Million Monthly Streaming Music Listeners

With This Partnership, Gaana – India’s Largest Streaming Service – Will Integrate Instreamatic’s Technology to Place Fully-Measurable Interactive Voice Ads Within Audio Content

Instreamatic, the voice dialogue marketing platform that allows media companies and advertisers to measure, manage, and monetize audio content by utilizing new interactive voice AI technology, and Gaana, India’s largest music and content streaming service, have partnered to integrate Instreamatic into Gaana’s platform. This partnership enables advertisers on Gaana to leverage Instreamatic technology and serve fully-measurable, interactive voice dialogue ads both in India and internationally. Gaana, with a userbase of more than 125 million monthly active users and more than 3.2 billion monthly streams, is also joining Instreamatic’s voice ad exchange for enhanced voice ad monetization as part of the new partnership.

Advertisers on audio-based apps have struggled with the “click challenge” inherent to the medium: because audio can’t be clicked – unlike the visual-based digital ads published on web and mobile interfaces – measuring and attributing the success of audio ad campaigns is often difficult and only estimates. Instreamatic’s technology provides a definitive answer to this challenge through fully-measurable interactive voice ads. With this partnership, Gaana listeners will engage with voice ads that present them with verbal prompts from a brand. For example, an ad’s call-to-action might invite the listener to respond affirmatively in order to receive more information about a product, or negatively to simply skip the ad. The ads are powered by Instreamatic’s True Voice AI technology, providing natural language understanding that enables audiences to engage with the ads in a native, conversational manner – with interactions that go far beyond simple “yes or no” responses.

“At Gaana, we strive to connect listeners with the experiences that put them in the driver’s seat, whether it’s choosing to listen to their favorite songs or, through this partnership, engaging with interactive voice ads where they control the conversation,” said Prashan Agarwal, CEO, Gaana. “With voice poised to be the interface of choice in the coming decade, we’re excited to introduce Instreamatic’s pioneering technology on our platform, and look forward to helping advertisers deliver the positive experiences it makes possible.”

Instreamatic is especially valuable – and differentiated – to advertisers because it enables continuous dialogue communications with listeners, allowing brands to engage in ongoing conversations not only across ads, but even across channels and audio publishers. Advertisers can retarget listeners with fresh ad content optimized with a full awareness of each individual’s engagement history with a campaign (and their responses to each ad).

Gaana has constantly innovated on behalf of its customers, be it in the form of lyrics, Gaana videos, or voice search. Gaana prides itself in being a dominant regional player with more than one-third of its playouts coming from languages other than English and Hindi. Apart from India, Gaana also has an engaged user base in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and UAE.

“As the popularity of streaming audio continues to increase, advertisers require empirical real-time ad metrics to fully understand the impact of their ad campaigns, while listeners seek more of a say in what shape those ad experiences take,” said Stas Tushinskiy, CEO, Instreamatic. “We’re proud to be partnering with Gaana and expanding into India in such a big way, and to play a role in delivering superior audio ad experiences for listeners and advertisers alike.”

Instreamatic also gathers metrics on all ad interactions and provides advertisers with rich and empirical data to fully measure the impact of ad campaigns, understand audience responses, and perform data-driven campaign optimization. Additionally, Instreamatic’s AI leverages deep learning mechanisms designed to iteratively refine and enhance the service to better understand user intent, further improving the user’s ad experience and the impact of campaigns. The robust potential of Instreamatic’s technology and dialogue advertising to deliver consumer engagement exceeding that of passive ads – while also providing indelible brand experiences – has been demonstrated in preliminary performance results.

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1010data Holiday Returns: How Scared Should Retailers Be

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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1010data Holiday Returns: How Scared Should Retailers Be

Data Reveals More Online Purchases Are Returned Than Brick and Mortar Purchases

1010data, a leader in analytical intelligence and marquee provider of consumer path to purchase and alternative data streams for the retail, consumer goods and financial services industries, released the fourth in a series of holiday reports analyzing consumer trends, both past and present. The 2019 Holiday Flash Report: Holiday Returns explores the impact of holiday returns on both retailers and brands. Utilizing proprietary data streams and enhanced attribution detailing the path to purchase of millions of US customers during the past holiday periods, the study delves into the complexity of the return season that will soon be upon us.

Returns are considered by retailers to be a cost of doing business. However, as online sales have increased, so have returns, and online returns have come at a higher cost than brick and mortar returns. Significantly, the report finds that more online purchases are returned than physical purchases: year to date through November 2019, Amazon saw a 6 percent return rate on net spend, while Walmart had only 2 percent. For the Gap, online sales from 2015-2018 were returned at a rate four times higher than in-store sales.

Numerous aspects factor into the losses associated with returns, from additional postage and restocking, all the way to the risk of not being able to resell the item at its original cost, at a discount, or at even all. However, it’s not all dire news. The silver lining is that returns can hold an important place in the lifespan of the retailer-consumer relationship. The report examines this hypothesis, detailing the opportunity to create a positive outcome out of a negative situation, highlighting the Kohls/Amazon relationship as one example.

“Looking across multiple retailers, there’s a considerable discrepancy in volume of returns by category, as well as channel. For example, you have Gamestop with a return rate of only 2 percent for full year 2018, while J. Crew hit 26 percent that same year,” noted Andy Mantis, Chief Business Officer of 1010reveal. “And there’s much that the online channel can learn from brick and mortar about reducing these volumes. While the return of holiday purchases are a large part of retail’s $351 billion annual problem, we discovered these returns, particularly those in-store, can be put to positive use, if retailers understand how to capitalize on them.”

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Arbor Day Foundation and YouTube Surpass Donation Goal to Plant 20 Million Trees Through Viral #TeamTrees Movement

Web & Social Prospecting Tools

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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Arbor Day Foundation and YouTube Surpass Donation Goal to Plant 20 Million Trees Through Viral #TeamTrees Movement

Social Media Campaign Becomes the Largest Crowdfunding Effort in YouTube’s History

The Arbor Day Foundation has announced that as of December 19 2019, at 3:28 p.m. CT, TeamTrees — a viral social media campaign driven by YouTube creators Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) and Mark Rober — reached its goal of raising $20 million to plant 20 million trees around the globe, beating the initial goal of January 1, 2020. Launched on October 25, the campaign is the largest crowdfunding effort in YouTube’s history and one of the fastest-growing environmental fundraising initiatives to-date.

The #TeamTrees campaign came to life when the online community challenged 21-year-old YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson – aka MrBeast – to plant 20 million trees to commemorate hitting 20 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. MrBeast’s Gen Z fans then suggested he join forces with other online influencers to drive awareness, including Mark Rober – a fellow YouTuber and former NASA scientist. The duo engaged the Arbor Day Foundation to make this lofty goal a reality, knowing that the organization had recently launched the Time for Trees initiative and is a consistent, trusted leader in tree planting of this scale.

“#TeamTrees is a prime example of youth leadership – especially the Gen Z ‘Change Generation’ – moving beyond retweet activism and harnessing the power of social media to address key societal issues,” said Dan Lambe, president of the Arbor Day Foundation. “The 20 million trees planted through this campaign will absorb and store 1.6 million tons of carbon, the equivalent of taking 1.24 million cars off the road for a year.”

More than half-a-million individual donations were collected over the course of 56 days. Inspired by this grassroots movement, industry tech leaders, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, donated between 200,000 to 1,000,001 trees each.

“When Mark [Rober] and I started this campaign, we couldn’t have predicted the incredible support #TeamTrees would receive,” said Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, YouTuber and philanthropist. “From hundreds of YouTube creators, to the biggest names in Silicon Valley, to kids holding bake sales, a huge team came together to make this possible. This is a big win for the planet.”

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Why People Must be a Critical Aspect – Customer Experience, Workforce Engagement, Emerging Technologies: Digital Transformation Report 2019

Buyer Insights

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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Why People Must be a Critical Aspect – Customer Experience, Workforce Engagement, Emerging Technologies: Digital Transformation Report 2019

This study covers why it’s important to incorporate not only how to improve customer experience into your business strategy, but also to integrate new possibilities for employee engagement. This will have a positive impact on your organization’s wealth and health.

People, processes, and technologies have long been the key elements of a CRM strategy. A recent study found that 99% of businesses are now in some stage of digital transformation. The people piece is a great place to start. Customers and employees play probably the most important role in a company’s success. This research proves that emerging technologies can help you gain a competitive edge.

Technologies such as Machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), mobility, and cloud computing are just a few examples of digital transformation that are impacting the customer contact world. Chatbots and cobots are robots that free up people to do more creative or higher level of work.

AI Systems can take care of a number of tasks including detecting fraud in finance; reading catscans in healthcare, driving school enrollment and improving safety and leisure in cars.
Beyond just automating repetitive and monotonous tasks, new digital customer interaction channels, such as virtual assistants and bots, Web self-service and social networks, are being used to infuse new capabilities across the customer contact landscape including analytics to improve performance and bring insights to agent performance and customer interactions.
This trend of new technology adoption feeds directly into the changes happening with workforce management in the contact center.
These technologies have the power to improve both – the customer experience (CX) and the employee experience (EX).

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Acxiom Makes Its Data Available to AWS Customers on AWS Data Exchange

STS News Desk

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December 20, 2019

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Acxiom Makes Its Data Available to AWS Customers on AWS Data Exchange

Acxiom, the data and technology foundation for the world’s best marketers, announced its selection as a Launch Partner for AWS Data Exchange, a new service that makes it easy for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers to securely find, subscribe to and use third-party data in the cloud. AWS Data Exchange will provide access to Acxiom’s expansive aggregated data for marketing analytics, including data from countries across EMEA, APAC and the Americas.

“We built AWS Data Exchange to offer organizations an easier way to find, subscribe to and integrate diverse data sets into the applications, analytics, and machine-learning models they’re running on AWS,” said Stephen Orban, General Manager, AWS Data Exchange. “We are delighted to be working with Acxiom to improve the efficiency of our shared customers’ analytics efforts.”

“Our clients often leverage data from various providers to drive their marketing strategies and decisions,” said Amanda Terry, vice president of publisher and platform partnerships at Acxiom. “Before AWS Data Exchange, clients would have to go to multiple SFTP sites to download the information and bring those data assets together in one place. Having the ability to access these insights in one place gives our clients the ability to spend more time on the analysis needed to make good business decisions and create better customer experiences.”

“Acxiom is excited to make a selection of our ethically sourced and privacy-compliant data sets available to AWS customers,” said David Skinner, managing director of channels and alliances at Acxiom. “We also look forward to bringing more of Acxiom’s high-value products and services to AWS customers in the near future, including our marketing analytics capabilities, data monetization services and additional custom data sets.”

Anywhere365 Announces Strategic Growth Investment From Bregal Milestone

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

MINI Australia Chooses Reevoo to Drive Brand Advocacy

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Fluent.ai Announces New CEO and Board Member to Accelerate Company Growth

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Nielsen Names New Chief Human Resources Officer, Laurie Lovett

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Instreamatic and Gaana Partner to Introduce Dialogue Advertising to More Than 110 Million Monthly Streaming Music Listeners

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

1010data Holiday Returns: How Scared Should Retailers Be

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Why People Must be a Critical Aspect – Customer Experience, Workforce Engagement, Emerging Technologies: Digital Transformation Report 2019

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Acxiom Makes Its Data Available to AWS Customers on AWS Data Exchange

Write in to psen@martechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Popular Posts

Anywhere365 Announces Strategic Growth Investment From Bregal Milestone

MINI Australia Chooses Reevoo to Drive Brand Advocacy

Fluent.ai Announces New CEO and Board Member to Accelerate Company Growth

Nielsen Names New Chief Human Resources Officer, Laurie Lovett

Instreamatic and Gaana Partner to Introduce Dialogue Advertising to More Than 110 Million Monthly Streaming Music Listeners

1010data Holiday Returns: How Scared Should Retailers Be

Why People Must be a Critical Aspect – Customer Experience, Workforce Engagement, Emerging Technologies: Digital Transformation Report 2019

Acxiom Makes Its Data Available to AWS Customers on AWS Data Exchange

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