Sabio Group, Europe’s leading technology and digital CX service provider, has acquired Fonetic, a leading Spanish provider of cloud-enabled AI voicebots, chatbots and customer behaviour analytics solutions.
The announcement strengthens Sabio’s AI and Automation solutions offering, enabling the company’s goal of supporting customers with its own truly innovative range of CX solutions to complement its broad multi-vendor product portfolio.
Since its formation in 2006, Fonetic has established itself as a specialist in the provision of voice recognition, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence-powered voicebot and chatbot solutions. Fonetic solutions help organisations to digitally transform their CX operations. The company currently manages, processes and monitors over 200 million interactions per year for major clients including Generali, Axa, Banco Santander, Endesa, , Linea Directa, Mapfre, Multiasistencia and Vodafone.
“We’re now at the stage where it’s reasonable to expect that almost every customer interaction will soon be fronted by AI in some shape or form, and that AI-enabled capabilities are poised to transform customer experience,” explained Sabio’s CEO Jonathan Gale. “With its proven voicebot, chatbot, customer behaviour analytics and visualisation capabilities, Fonetic directly addresses this challenge. The company not only brings an incredibly talented team but valuable expertise in CX digital transactions that will be an important addition to Sabio’s own IP portfolio.”
“At Fonetic we can demonstrate how our voicebots and chatbots perform at scale. This helps our clients to digitally transform their customer engagement by increasing CX efficiencies while also securing significant increases in customer satisfaction,” added Juan Manuel Soto, Fonetic’s CEO and Founder. “As part of the Sabio Group we can bring our voicebot and chatbot offering to a much broader market, especially as AI and automation adoption within the CX sector is set to accelerate exponentially.”
Fonetic works closely with Generali Spain’s Digital Transformation team, and designed and developed the multichannel Bot for Generali in Spain. Commenting on Sabio Group’s acquisition of Fonetic, Generali Spain’s Head of Business Transformation and Control, Enrique Lorente said: “Fonetic’s Bot expertise and design skills are a key factor behind the success of our cognitive Bot – by providing a conversational assistant to our distributors and customers, offering automatic claim management, one of Generali’s key and highly volume processes, and allowing them to use the channel of their choice, in an easy and natural way. We look forward to being part of their continued success.”
Based in Madrid, Fonetic employs 49 people, 38 of whom are developers and linguists. Fonetic voicebots and chatbots are bot-agnostic and can be deployed using either the company’s own technology or integrated with third-party NLP assets to get the most out of tools such as Microsoft Bot Framework & Luis, Google Dialogflow, IBM Watson, Nuance’s Nina, Sabio’s own solution flexAnswer, Genesys or home assistants like Alexa and Google Home.
Backed by Horizon Capital, the Fonetic acquisition continues Sabio Group’s growth plan to broaden the company’s solutions portfolio and geographic coverage. To date this has included the acquisitions of SaaS solutions provider Rapport in March 2017, DatapointEurope – one of Europe’s leading contact centre technology providers – in July 2017, customer insight and contact centre benchmarking experts Bright UK in March 2018, flexAnswer Solutions, the leading Singapore-based provider of innovative Virtual Assistant solutions in December 2018, Spain-based WFO and Speech Analytics specialist Callware in January 2019, Madrid-based CX solutions specialist Team vision in January 2020, DVELP – Twilio’s leading partner in the UK and EMEA region in March 2020, one of Europe’s leading Genesys Cloud partners – Coverage Group – in July 2020, award-winning Genesys Partner Anana in October 2020, and makepositive – the UK’s leading independent Salesforce systems integrator – in March 2021. The shareholders of Fonetic were advised on the transaction by Seabird Capital.
About Fonetic:
Based in Madrid, Fonetic is one of Spain’s leading providers of cloud-enabled AI voicebots, chatbots and customer behaviour analytics solutions. The company manages, processes and monitors over 200 million interactions per year for major clients including Axa, Banco Santander, Endesa, Generali, linea directa, Mapfre, Multiasistencia and Vodafone.
Visit www.fonetic.com
About Sabio Group:
Sabio Group, which includes Sabio, Dvelp, flexAnswer and Coverage Group, delivers solutions and services that seamlessly combine digital and human interactions to support outstanding customer experiences. Through its own technology and that of world-class technology leaders such as Avaya, Genesys, Verint, Twilio and Google, Sabio Group helps organisations to optimise their customer journeys by making better decisions across their multiple contact channels. The group works with major brands worldwide, including Aegon, AXA Assistance, Bankia, BBVA, BGL, Caixabank, DHL, Essent, GovTech, HomeServe, Liverpool Victoria, M1, Office Depot, Saga, Sainsbury’s Argos, Telefónica, Think Money and Transcom Worldwide.
Visit www.sabiogroup.com