8x8, a provider of cloud phone, meeting, collaboration, and contact center solutions, has acquired MarianaIQ (MIQ), a start-up specializing in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
MIQ brings deep learning capabilities to 8x8's X Series to transform both employee and customer experience.
"8x8 has continuously evolved itself to provide best-in-class enterprise communications to our customers. With the acquisition of MarianaIQ, we are fundamentally transforming how customers and employees interact through one system of engagement and how companies optimize valuable moments of customer engagement with one set of data in one system of intelligence," said Dejan Deklich, chief product officer at 8x8, in a statement. "We are thrilled to add top-notch AI talent to strengthen 8x8's market leadership in the $40 billion-dollar enterprise engagement management market."
The enhanced 8x8 AI and machine learning teams will enhance the X Series single System of Intelligence Platform to weave in contextual personalization for omnichannel services. By infusing MIQ's deep learning capabilities into 8x8's X Series, contact center agents can have detailed information on previous interactions, complete customer history, and a 360-degree context before they even start a conversation.
Other efforts will center around intelligent call routing, helping to identify the caller and the reason for the call to assign the customer to the right agent, executive, or subject matter expert; and speech analytics, leveraging natural language processing to analyze customer interactions for compliance, deeper insights, agent performance purposes, and to identify upsell opportunities or escalate at-risk customers to the highest-level of service.
"Acquisitions remain a key part of our strategy to continuously innovate and disrupt the enterprise communications space," said Bryan Martin, chief technology officer at 8x8, in a statement. "We acquired Sameroom last year to enhance our team collaboration capabilities, and we are one of the very few players offering an interoperable chat system that can speak to Slack, Stride, and other enterprise-level chat applications. The acquisition of MarianaIQ is the right investment in making X Series a single system of engagement and intelligence to deliver exceptional experience for both employees and customers."