An Acquisition that Made Perfect Sense
Artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly, and it’s changing the way customers and businesses interact on every level. As more of these interactions move online, automated chatbots are becoming a mainstay in industries of all kinds. What was once a quirky, clunky novelty is now an essential component of your business’s customer experience.
Companies across the globe are adapting to new consumer behaviors, which are increasingly centered around digital, online technologies. The chatbot market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.5% per year between 2020 and 2027 — from $396.2 million to $1.95 billion. Clearly, this technology will be a focal point of business investment in the years ahead.
At Cyara, we’re invested in every aspect of your customer’s journey. And we know that, these days, it goes beyond voice channels and includes digital interfaces of all kinds. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our acquisition of the leading chatbot technology on the market: Botium.
This acquisition is a giant leap forward in our ability to assure digital customer journeys with a robust set of capabilities designed to test chatbots and conversational AI. Here’s a little background on Botium—and what this new partnership means for you.
Who is Botium?
Simply put, Botium provides the most comprehensive automated chatbot assurance solution on the market. Since its founding in 2018 by Christoph Börner and Florian Treml, the Vienna, Austria-based company has excelled at generating awareness and differentiating its core product, Botium Box, from others in the market.
Botium Box specializes in testing every aspect of AI, natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) to ensure that your customers’ chatbot technologies deliver a top-notch CX across the board. Botium’s goal is to ensure customers aren’t confused and frustrated by interacting with hapless, limited bots.
Thanks to the Botium team’s expertise in digital CX assurance, they were named a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2021.
Why Did Cyara Acquire Botium?
For us at Cyara, this acquisition couldn’t be a more natural fit. As I mentioned already, we’ve been investing in chatbot testing and assurance for a while. But we were eager to pick up the pace.
By the end of 2020, roughly 80% of large organizations had already adopted chatbot technology. The rate of adoption is only increasing, and we wanted to accelerate our ability to provide the right solutions for our customers. Our recent $350 million funding round targets developments just like this one.
Botium’s automated chatbot testing significantly reduces the efforts of enterprise IT teams and shortens chatbot time to market, reducing testing time by 93%. Its software adds value at every phase of a customer’s bot development lifecycle.
Sound familiar? That’s because it’s very much like what Cyara does for contact center and IVR testing. In fact, our two companies already have several customers in common. It makes sense to bring it all under one roof.
By adding Botium Box to the Cyara suite of offerings, customers will get a feature-rich product that has validation in the market and expands our ability to provide digital CX assurance. Botium will serve as our digital CX assurance development team, bringing deep digital expertise to Cyara.
What this Partnership Means for You
So, what does this mean for you, our customers? And, for that matter, what does it mean for Botium’s customers?
In short, it means we’re able to offer unparalleled CX assurance, unlike anything else on the market today.
Botium Box adds another robust testing solution to the Cyara CX assurance suite. Like all Cyara products, this user-friendly, no-code software makes it easy to design and execute automated testing at every stage of the customer journey and software development lifecycle.
Before you even launch a chatbot application, Botium will help you evaluate and compare NLP scores for a wide range of chatbot providers so you can choose the right conversational AI system for your company. This ensures you’re starting with the right software from the beginning.
With Botium Box, you can create tests through a simple, visual interface. The software simulates real human behavior (including human errors, typing idiosyncrasies and emotions) so you can thoroughly test your chatbot interface. After you deploy updates, Botium monitors your chatbot system to ensure you deliver a smooth CX. And that applies across any chat platforms you use, whether it’s on your website, social messengers, or mobile apps.
If you’re a Botium customer, welcome to the Cyara family! You’re now part of a long-established company with a history of success in automated CX testing. Not only do we deliver an award-winning product, but our end-to-end customer service is second to none. We’re committed to extending that service to Botium Box, and excited to offer you an expanded suite of solutions for all your automated testing and CX assurance needs.
What’s Next?
The news of this announcement is hot off the press, so we’re just getting started. Over the coming months, we’ll be finalizing transition plans with our internal teams and Botium’s team. And we’ll be reviewing Botium’s current roadmap to determine how it all fits within our existing framework.
We can’t wait to unveil all the benefits this new partnership will bring, and we’re confident it will help us deliver even more smiles at scale. Stay tuned.
For more information about how Cyara + Botium can help you deliver CX assurance at scale—and in every customer service channel—reach out to us today.
