The biggest win in this new roundup of customer success stories is the deal that Five9 secured with a yet unidentified global health conglomerate, reportedly worth some $40 million yearly. But the four other successful partnerships highlighted in the roundup are also notable in their own way. Those pairings involve ActionIQ and Jackson Hewitt; Vonage and Headsets.com; Qualtrics and healthcare organizations; and Medallia, with its Zingle offering, and IHG Hotels & Resorts. Details follow below.
Five9 Wins Multimillion Dollar Deal
Five9, a major contact center provider headquartered in San Ramon, California, has reportedly finalized a deal to implement its cloud solution for a global healthcare conglomerate, according to news sources, which did not disclose the identity of the client but described it as one of the world’s largest companies made up of many notable retail, pharmacy, and health insurance brands.
The transaction is expected to generate annual recurring revenue (ARR) of more than $40 million in software subscriptions for Five9. The company cemented the deal after competing with other big players in the contact center as a service (CCaaS) space.
Dan Burkland, president at Five9, was quoted by the news reports as saying that the healthcare conglomerate had been experiencing technology troubles after many years of acquisitions and expansions, but that it was ready to go with Five9 to replace its on-premises legacy solutions from Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, and NICE.
Burkland, the reports added, said Five9 was selected for a number of reasons, including its ability to deliver a differentiated CX, the company’s track record in providing insights and analytics to optimize contact center operations, deep integration with Salesforce, and a workforce optimization (WFO) solution backed by customer engagement specialist Verint for obtaining visibility into work and processes across multiple functional areas in an organization.
The new deal is the latest achievement for Five9, which welcomed 134 new customers in last year’s final quarter alone. Five9 was the target of an unsolicited $14.7 billion acquisition bid by video conferencing company Zoom in October 2021. The deal fell apart at the 11th hour, scuttled by Five9 shareholder concerns about the drop in Zoom’s stock value and the low valuation of Five9 assessed by Zoom.
ActionIQ to Optimize CX for Jackson Hewitt
ActionIQ and its CX Hub suite of services have been selected by Jackson Hewitt to provide a better understanding of the tax preparation company’s customers and optimize their customer journeys. CX Hub is the customer data platform (CDP) from ActionIQ to help companies consolidate their user data, and executives at New Jersey-headquartered Jackson Hewitt express confidence that the partnership will enhance its organizational intelligence on customers and drive long-term revenue and growth.
CX Hub is augmented with the identity resolution capabilities of Neustar, the Virginia-based provider of information, analytics, and directory services for the global communications and internet industries.
The joint ActionIQ-Neustar solution will enable Jackson Hewitt to create 360-degree views of customers and convert anonymous prospects into known customers. The solution will also help enrich customer profiles and solve acquisition challenges, such as unknown web traffic.
Vonage is Integrated Communication Solutions Provider for Headsets.com
Vonage, the business cloud communications company based in New Jersey, is the provider of an integrated unified communications and contact center solution to Headsets.com, the San Francisco-based e-commerce business specializing in wireless and corded office headsets.
Headsets.com relies on two Vonage products to achieve a harmonious experience for its agents and to deliver top-shelf customer service. Vonage Business Communications (VBC) enables a flexible, unified communications experience for the on-site and hybrid work employees of Headsets.com, while Vonage Contact Center increases productivity and creates personalized customer connections. With Vonage, the Headsets.com team has strategically built both internal and external communications workflows that power exceptional experiences for both customers and employees.
Partnering with Vonage, the customer support team at Headsets.com reports a 98% success rate, the customer journey supplied by the headsets maker marked by real-time interactions, intelligent routing, and advanced data reporting, supported by both internal and external communication workflows intended to deliver exceptional CX and EX.
Qualtrics is Selected by Healthcare Organizations
Experience management (XM) provider Qualtrics says its XM Platform was the choice of hundreds of organizations worldwide during 1Q 2022 to create distinctive experiences in healthcare.
A key healthcare feature of Qualtrics XM is its capability to gather experience data from more than 125 sources—data voluntarily shared by consumers or employees through surveys, chatbots, and call centers; as well as data indirectly shared in online reviews, on a company’s website, and across social media. Combining regulatory and real-time feedback, Qualtrics can provides organizations with insights to elevate patient satisfaction while maintaining compliance with government regulations.
Organizations that used XM solutions in 1Q included Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota (BCBSND) and its provider network of more than 310,000 members and 2,500 employees; Illinois-based Carle Health to track vaccination and testing of nearly 12,000 employees and volunteers; Crowne Health Care and its network of facilities in Alabama for nursing, assisted living, and independent living; and health system operator Providence to improve the financial experience of patients in five Western US states including Alaska.
Medallia Zingle to Drive Guest Engagement in IHG Hotels & Resorts
Medallia Zingle, the business text messaging platform of San Francisco-based CX management provider Medallia Inc., has been selected by global hospitality company IHG Hotels & Resorts to drive guest engagement and enhance both the guest and employee experience (EX) of the chain’s nearly 6,000 hotels spread across more than 100 countries around the world.
IHG will use Medallia Zingle and the platform’s AI-powered technology to enable hotel guests and IHG on-property teams to interact in real time, using the preferred language of the guests and their chosen method of communication, including SMS text, in-app, web chat, or social messaging apps like WhatsApp. For IHG employees, Medallia Zingle will enable them to scale real-time guest communication, allow quicker response times, and drive additional revenue opportunities.
Medallia has collaborated with IHG in other enterprise CX initiatives. It is the vendor behind the IHG Heartbeat guest survey program, and the Medallia software as a service (SaaS) solution called Experience Cloud is used by IHG to analyze and act on areas of opportunity.
Author Information
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.
