IVR’s…love them or hate them, they are an almost ubiquitous part of the contact centre industry and have been around for a very long time. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the first commercial IVR system was built to perform order entry and inventory control back in 1973, although the technology was certainly in its infancy, and considered expensive and difficult to implement.
Westford, MA. May 10, 2021. Today, Aspect Software will merge with Noble Systems of Atlanta Georgia, to form Aspect™, (pronounced: ahl-vahr-ee-uh), a new global company delivering optimized customer experience and workforce engagement software and cloud services technology solutions.
The newly combined company will be led by Patrick Dennis, Aspect President and CEO.
“This merger will combine two of the leaders in the customer experience space into a major unified force for innovation and growth,” said Patrick Dennis, President & CEO of Aspect. “Our unified customer base represents the largest financial institutions, healthcare, online retail, and travel and transportation companies in the world. We are so excited to embark on this next stage of our corporate development.”
Abry Partners (“Abry”), a Boston-based private equity firm, spearheaded the merger and is now the majority owner of the combined company. Vector Capital, owner of Aspect, will continue as minority equity holder. The total value of the combined transaction is over $1 billion USD.
“We are impressed with the transformation of Aspect under the leadership of Patrick and the Vector team,” said Tomer Yosef-Or, partner at Abry, “and Noble Systems will be an excellent merger partner, making Aspect an even stronger competitor in the market.”
Andy Fishman, a Managing Director of Vector Capital, added, “We congratulate and thank Patrick and the entire Aspect organization for their incredible work. We are excited to partner with Abry as we bring together Aspect and Noble Systems as the new Aspect and look forward to supporting the new company through its next phase of growth.”
Jim Noble, founder and CEO of Noble Systems, will transition into a new role as an advisor to Abry and Aspect. “Jim has made a lasting impact in this marketplace,” continued Mr. Yosef-Or. “He has led Noble through 30 years of innovation and growth. This merger is a fitting exclamation point to his successful career.”
News of this merger was met with enthusiasm from key Industry Analysts. According to Nancy Jamison, Industry Director, Information and Communications Technologies at Frost and Sullivan, “Aspect plus Noble is a very strong match. Their combined technology stack and market presence, particularly in outbound contact management, will make Aspect an extremely formidable player in the space. This should be welcome news to enterprise customers worldwide.”
According to Mary Wardley, VP Customer Care and CRM research at IDC, “The Aspect/Noble merger will be a jolt of lightning to the Contact Center market for several reasons; first will be the surprise to the market, second will be the long-term opportunity these two companies and product lines bring. Large enterprise customers will especially see big benefits through innovations to come. This could spur more acquisitions as vendors vie for customers and market share.”
“We are launching Aspect with an aggressive schedule, beginning with the immediate introduction of our new corporate identity and website, www.alvaria.com, followed by merged operations,” said Michael Harris, Aspect Chief Product Officer and CMO. “Customers of Aspect Software and Noble Systems will continue to use the existing products and services they depend on now for delivering mission critical services, without interruption, followed by a seamless transition to the next generation of Aspect systems and services.”
Aspect Software and Vector Capital were advised by Jefferies LLC as their sole financial advisor, and Paul Hastings LLP as their legal counsel. Abry Partners was advised by TD Securities (USA) LLC as its financial advisor, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP as its legal counsel. Noble Systems was advised by Eversheds Sutherland as its legal counsel.
Media Contact:
Aspect, Aspect Software & Noble Systems:
Michael Harris, CPO/CMO, Aspect
[email protected]
About ALVARIA:
Aspect was founded through the merger of Aspect Software and Noble Systems, technology leaders in Customer Experience (CX) and Workforce Engagement solutions. Our name is derived from Latin for “hives” – nature’s perfect form for millions of years – bringing you solutions that are scalable, resilient and secure, with efficiency, speed and pinpoint accuracy. ALVARIA™. Reshaping Customer Experience™. For more information, please visit www.alvaria.com
About Abry Partners:
Abry is one of the most experienced and successful sector-focused private equity investment firms in North America. Since their founding in 1989, the firm has completed over $82.0 billion of leveraged transactions and other private equity or preferred equity placements. Currently, the firm manages over $5.0 billion of capital across their active funds. For more information on Abry, please visit www.Abry.com.
About Vector Capital:
Vector Capital is a leading global private equity firm specializing in transformational investments in established technology businesses. With more than $3 billion of capital under management, Vector actively partners with management teams to devise and execute new financial and business strategies that materially improve the competitive standing of businesses and enhance value for employees, customers, and all stakeholders. For more information, visit www.vectorcapital.com.
Since the beginning of 2020 and the inception of COVID-19, contact centers have had to make adjustments as to the way we work and employees’ daily lives. This shift in the workplace proved to be specifically challenging for contact centers and help desks. Agents were used to being in an office and not working virtually. The change to in-person and effectively assisting customers had to take place quickly and efficiently. On any given day, agents might experience more extended workdays due to higher call volume, handling of complicated subjects, and customer complaints, and aggravation.
In the past year, businesses across the world have seen significant disruptions to their daily operations. For many industries, this has meant, changing the way they operate, enabling staff to work from home and trying to keep staff engaged regardless of where they are working from.
Providing an excellent customer experience is hard work, but it’s essential to your business’s success. As the face of the customer service department, your contact center is an instrumental tool to address any problems with your customer’s satisfaction. Improving the customer experience is a multi-step process and will often require some retooling along the way. Below, we have four ways to improve your customer experience.
If you want to facilitate an environment for your contact centre agents to succeed, you need to start coaching. Coaching is a great way to encourage, enable, and empower your agents to not only want to be better at their jobs but perform better. Coaching is also a great opportunity for your agents to learn new skills, get feedback on the work they are doing, and resolve the problems they might be having with calls.
Contact centres are always looking for new ways to ensure employee engagement and productivity, especially now that many agents work, at least some of the time, from home. For remote agents especially, it can be more difficult to plug into the culture of the office and stay engaged with the brand without the face to face interaction they would usually have in the contact centre.
One of the most significant challenges that contact centres face is an incredibly high rate of agent turnover, creating a cyclical problem where the Learning and Development team is continuously training new agents for them only to stay with the company for a couple of months. This can be expensive. In this blog, we have four strategies for contact centres that are hoping to retain their agents and reduce turnover.
With the threat of COVID-19 still lingering, everyone needs to understand exactly what it means to come back to the office. Contact centres are at an especially high-risk for transmission due to the number of people on each shift and the sharing of equipment between team members throughout the day. There need to be strict safety guidelines in place for businesses that are bringing their workforce back into the office. In this blog, we go into detail on what bringing your staff back to the contact centre should look like
n our third instalment in the WFM and New Normal series, we talk about the impacts of increased handle times. As a lot of contact centres have quickly had to adopt work from home strategies to maintain BAU status, there have been some things to be wary of, and increased AHT is one of them.
