Nice buys Fizzback to lead a flurry of acquisition activity 

Nice leads the way to buy feisty feedback operator, while Capita delves into Vertex and Market Force takes over at Retail Eyes

Fizzback's event-driven SaaS-based solution conducts an automated real-time dialogue in natural language with consumers via mobile, web, or social media, resulting in it is claimed up to 50% response rates, well above industry norms at under 10%

Real-time feedback with high response rates enable Fizzback's customers to deliver quality and statistically valid inputs to each relevant individual in the organization for prompt action, thus improving customer satisfaction and operational efficiency, making Fizzback a strategic part of daily operations

NICE will be acquiring Fizzback for a total cash consideration of approximately $80 million; Deal expected to close in beginning of fourth quarter 2011.

Zeevi Bregman, President and CEO of NICE said, " The adoption of and demand for CEM solutions, at all levels of the organization, including Marketing, Finance and Operations, is on the rise. 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 cross-enterprise CEM strategy."

Rob Keve, CEO of Fizzback said, "Our unique solution has been enabling our customers to achieve exceptionally high response rates from their customers, and to receive feedback in real-time. This combination allows them to take immediate action for increasing customer loyalty and driving efficiency across the enterprise. This has resulted in extremely high usage rates for our customers, making Fizzback a strategic part of how our customers make decisions and run the business. Thus, we are proud to have experienced rapid growth and high rates of product adoption. 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."

Capita captures Vertex arm
Meantime Capita has acquired the UK private sector operation of customer management specialist Vertex for £40m. About 1,400 workers will transfer to Capita in the UK, while 200 support staff in India will transfer.

Paul Pindar, CEO at Capita, said the deal will strengthen Capita's existing resources and provide new customer opportunities. "Many of our clients adopt a multi-channel approach for both sales and customer engagement, so it is essential that we have the depth of functions necessary to meet all of these requirements," he said.

Capita will acquire UK resources focused on sectors including retail, utilities, logistics and transportation, travel and leisure and media and telecoms.

Vertex will continue to serve the public sector and financial services customers in the UK. Capita has recently bolstered its UK operation with the purchase of contact centre operator Ventura. In July this year, Capita acquired Ventura for £65m in a further sign of IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) consolidation. The acquisition gave Capita private sector clients O2, Orange, British Gas, Tesco Bank and Google, as well as customers in the public sector such as the Department of Work & Pensions.

Market Force buys Retail Eyes
Last but not least Market Force Information, the world’s leading customer intelligence solutions company, is expanding into the European market with the acquisition of UK-based Retail Eyes, Europe’s premier customer experience and mystery shopping provider.

The acquisition is Market Force’s fifth on the road to pioneering the customer intelligence market for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. Like Market Force, Retail Eyes offers a range of customer intelligence solutions – from mystery shopping, to customer satisfaction surveys, to in-store auditing – all on an integrated analytics platform.

Retail Eyes will serve as Market Force’s European headquarters as it provides customer intelligence solutions and market expertise for clients throughout the UK and Europe. Retail Eyes has an independent contractor network of more than 300,000 consumers across Europe who provide feedback as mystery shoppers to help brands such as Pret A Manger, Subway and Swarovski maintain the highest levels of customer service across their stores.

According to Sahir Anand, vice president and principal analyst with Aberdeen Group, Customer Intelligence is a new generation of customer experience management. “By pulling together multiple threads of consumer data – from mystery shopping, to customer satisfaction measurement, to 800-call centre data, to social media – and coupling them with store financial metrics, retailers can understand the gaps associated with end-to-end customer experience before, during and after the sale. This approach is critical to improving customer conversion, margin and revenue.” 

 “The market for customer intelligence solutions is just beginning to explode in the UK and Europe, and we want to be at the forefront,” said Tim Ogle, CEO of Retail Eyes. “We already have some of the most highly valued brands in the UK as clients. They appreciate how getting the customer experience right with every visit drives their success. The scale, product repertoire and Ph.D. analytics that Market Force offers, in combination with our UK and European expertise, makes us a formidable force together in a blossoming international market.”