Conventional wisdom has it that the pandemic-driven shift to online channels caused a boom in customer experience tech. So I don’t know what to make of this Jitterbit report that EMEA companies spent 15% less on customer experience integrations in 2021. Jitterbit believes companies shifted resources to meet urgent needs for ecommerce (up 99%) and employee tech (72%). Okay, but did CX spend really drop?
Slow cooking is a thing, right, so how about some slow news? It only took one month for us to hear that journey orchestration vendor Pointillist had been acquired by contact center provider Genesys, as part of its project to be more than a contact center provider. Genesys also bought conversational AI platform Exceed.ai for the same reason.
Crowdsourced business data has a mixed reputation, but apparently Lusha is making it work: the company just raised a $205 million Series B, following a $40 million Series A in February. The system recommends relevant contacts from its base of 100 million business contacts and has direct integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Gmail, Outlook, Zapier, and other common tools.
Salesforce has reversed course on its bid to acquire data management and integration platform Informatica a source has told Reuters. Informatica itself said that it is not in talks to be acquired. Salesforce stocks rose on this latest news while Informatica’s fell.