Khoros buys Topbox to combine customer engagement tools with omnichannel analytics
Digital engagement software provider Khoros on Tuesday said it was acquiring analytics firm Topbox to support its mission of helping brands improve customer communication and boost retention.
Based in Austin, Khronos offers tools to manage online customer communities, market to customers on social media and provide care through digital channels. Topbox, meanwhile, describes itself as an “omnichannel conversation analytics platform,” deriving insights to better serve customers by using AI to study call recordings, chat transcripts, emails and other content.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Spokespeople for Khoros did not respond to interview requests from 360 Magazine at press time.
Speaking at the virtual CMX Summit three weeks ago, Khoros vice-president of solution strategy Michael Puhala suggested that many brands need to recognize that engaging customers proactively is key to providing can exceptional experience.
“Sometimes it’s easy to just fall into this trap of, ‘Hey this community is there as a support mechanism or to offload our call centre or deflect calls,’” he said in the session, which was recorded. “We want to think of community more holistically.”
An example is analytics software giant SAS Inc., a Khoros customer that has used videos across its online community. This has led to 22,000 new members on its community over the past year, Puhala said, and a 27 per cent increase in new messages and replies.
The addition of Topbox means Khoros will be able to offer deeper insight into how customers are not only engaging on a brand’s own community but through many other channels as well.
Shortly after the acquisition was announced, Khorus uploaded a slew of videos to its YouTube channel featuring customers and breakdowns of its products, as well as a sort of “hero reel” that outlined the core challenges it is trying to solve. It compares the way customers are typically routed around companies to a ball in a pinball machine.
Topbox has been active in sponsoring webinars and other activities with the CXPA. Last summer it also offered CX professionals an alternative to Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a standard metric for evaluating how customers feel about a brand. It described its Brand Experience Score (BXS) as a way to provide executives with enterprise-level visibility into the performance of customer-impacting areas of their business using simple, interactive spark charts that draw from its analytics tools.
Khoros also announced a “significant investment” from Vista Equity Partners intended to help continue the acceleration of its growth plan.
