Medallia, the San Francisco-based CX and employee experience (EX) specialist firm, is set to acquire the UK’s Thunderhead in a strategy aimed at serving the customer journey needs of enterprise technology firms.
The provider of software and technology for real-time customer journey orchestration and analytics, Thunderhead is expected to strengthen Medallia’s ability to power individualized journeys and conversations at scale across both online and offline channels. Founded in 2001, Thunderhead has multiple headquarters—in Manchester, New Hampshire, for North America; in London for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and in Amsterdam for the Benelux region.
Medallia president and CEO Leslie Stretch said that with the acquisition, Medallia continues to engineer innovation for the CX world. “This latest acquisition is targeted at the needs of the most pioneering enterprise companies who are looking for new ways to make customers feel known, no matter where they are interacting,” said Stretch. “The combination of Medallia Experience Cloud and Thunderhead’s open technology for real-time interaction delivers feedback-driven personalization on a massive scale. Thunderhead’s journey orchestration capability ensures every enterprise can make the most of feedback data to shape their product and service offerings, customer journeys, and experiences.”
For Glen Manchester, founder and CEO of Thunderhead, the acquisition by Medallia signals “the next era” of CX. “Medallia pioneered customer experience management and continues to lead the category,” said Manchester. “With Thunderhead, Medallia can ensure that every single aspect of the customer lifecycle—marketing, commerce, sales, and service—will be a seamless, relevant, and frictionless experience.”
Manchester said Thunderhead pioneered the idea of a closed-loop customer engagement platform powered by continuous listening, feedback, and learning, all actioned through the company’s fusion of journey orchestration and real-time interaction management.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of this fiscal year. In November last year, Medallia was itself acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $6.4 billion.
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Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
