Medallia to purchase Voci for $59m

Customer feedback analysis provider Medallia has agreed to acquire Voci Technologies, a US-based speech recognition technology spinout of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), for approximately $59m.
The all-cash transaction is expected to close next month, subject to customary closing conditions.
Founded in 2006, Voci supplies software for contact centres to automatically transcribe and evaluate customer calls using speech recognition and natural language processing technologies.
The offering is able to discern verbal features such as emotion, gender and sentiment, and can create separate biometric identities for each speaker.
Medallia will utilise Voci in a bid to enhance its customer feedback management software product – Medallia Experience Cloud.
Voci Technologies had raised a total of $17.9m in equity funding and debt, according to regulatory filings and media reports.
Venture capital firms Grotech Ventures and Harbert Growth Partners co-led a $8m series B round in 2018, following $725,000 of debt and $1m of equity in 2016 and 2014, according to securitis documents.
CMU had backed Voci’s $3.1m series A round in 2012 led by Pittsburgh Equity Partners, taking part alongside existing investors BlueTree Allied Angels and Innovation Works, according to VCNewsDaily.
Leslie Stretch, president and CEO at Medallia, said: “Voci transcribes 100% of live and recorded calls into text that can be analysed quickly to determine customer satisfaction, adding a powerful set of signals to the Medallia Experience Cloud.
“At the same time, Voci enables call analysis moments after each interaction has completed, optimizing every aspect of call center operations securely. Especially important as virtual and remote contact centre operations take shape.”