NICE Systems buys UK’s Fizzback

NICE Systems Ltd. has acquired UK Voice of the Customer (VoC) solutions developer Fizzback Ltd. for $80 million in cash.

By GLOBES CORRESPONDENT
Stock trader monitors market movement 311 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo)
Stock trader monitors market movement 311 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo)
NICE Systems Ltd. has acquired UK Voice of the Customer (VoC) solutions developer Fizzback Ltd. for $80 million in cash.
NICE said that the acquisition would enable it to introduce a complete Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution.
The company expects to close the deal in the fourth quarter.
Fizzback’s Software as a Service (SaaS) VoC solution sends customers’ requests for feedback about a specific interaction or transaction via mobile, web or social media. The consumer is engaged at the point of experience, such as the call center, branch, point of sale (POS), mobile application, or web. The system analyzes the feedback to determine a relevant response, and it automatically conducts a dialog with the consumer in natural language rather than in survey format.
Fizzback’s approach generates response rates of up to 50 percent, compared with the industry norm of less than 10%, because it motivates consumers to provide relevant feedback at the moment of interaction. Additionally, consumers provide feedback about their experience rather than only about what was asked in a survey.
With more than 150 million feedbacks collected annually, Fizzback enables organizations to better understand their customers’ perceptions, and improve customer experience.
NICE president and CEO Zeevi Bregman commented on the future of such customer experience solutions.
“The adoption of and demand for CEM solutions, at all levels of the organization, including marketing, finance and operations, is on the rise,” he said. “With the addition of Fizzback, NICE is expanding the scope of its capabilities of impacting every customer interaction by introducing a Customer Experience Management solution with the most complete Voice of the Customer offering. This enables our customers to more effectively capture, understand and leverage VoC as the foundation to a crossenterprise CEM strategy.”
Fizzback CEO Rob Keve was also praiseworthy of the deal.
“Our unique solution has been enabling our customers to achieve exceptionally high response rates from their customers, and to receive feedback in real-time,” he said. “We are looking forward to combining these capabilities with NICE’s real-time, cross-channel analytics to provide both NICE and Fizzback customers greater access to even broader capabilities with a more complete VoC solution.”
NICE estimates that the acquisition will lower its non-GAAP earning per share for the fourth quarter by $0.02-0.03, but that it will add $20 million to NICE’s non-GAAP revenues in 2012.
Fizzback was founded in 2004.
Its customers include British Telecom (BT), O2, Best Buy Europe, Everything Everywhere, National Express, Virgin Media, Tesco, and several Tier 1 North American telecom carriers.
NICE’s share price rose 0.5% on Nasdaq yesterday to $30.89, giving a market of $2 billion, but fell 0.4% by mid-afternoon on the TASE today to NIS 113.50.