Introducing Creovai: Formerly Tethr & Awaken Intelligence - CX Today

Oct 15, 2024

What will this new company bring to the CX table?

Published: June 11, 2024

Rhys Fisher Fisher

Announced last week, Tethr and Awaken Intelligence have merged to create Creovai: a new company that will focus on delivering AI-powered contact center software.

But why have the companies decided to combine forces? And how will customers and companies benefit?

In a blog published on Tethr’s website, CEO Robert Beasley detailed how Creovai would combine the two tech firms’ infrastructure to create something “greater than the sum of their parts.”

So, before we explore what Creovai will bring to the party, let’s take a quick look at the two parts.

In short, Tethr is a provider of AI-powered conversation intelligence software.

With over a decade of experience in the customer experience sector, the company leverages machine learning and AI to derive actionable insights from customer conversations – helping contact center and CX leaders achieve “meaningful business improvements.”

Like its fellow Creovai collaborator, Awaken Intelligence is also a fairly young company, having been developing and delivering “innovative” agent guidance software since 2019.

By providing contact centers with access to its suite of AI-powered agent guidance software, Awaken allows leaders, managers, analysts, and agents to effectively handle the complexities and intricacies of customer interactions.

With both companies in the business of utilizing AI to deliver contact center solutions, the merger appears to be a natural fit. Indeed, the “complementary” nature of the vendors’ offerings was discussed by Awaken CEO Simon Black in a blog post:

Together, we share a vision of AI’s power to transform customer and employee experiences.

“As businesses harness our solutions, we believe they’ll find new ways to improve experiences and retention for agents and customers, increase sales, and reduce the cost of service.”

But how exactly will the two companies’ tech stacks coexist and provide these enhanced solutions to their users?

While general improvements are to be expected when two vendors merge, arguably the most important and interesting aspect of this new company is what it will be able to deliver that will differentiate it from the rest of the market.

The major gap that Creovai plans to fill is unifying the conversation intelligence and agent assistance sectors.

Both companies believe that contact center leaders have struggled with a fragmented market for too long.

When it comes to enhancing the agent experience, the tech has primarily focused on workforce automation rather than making their jobs easier or more fulfilling. Whereas, although most analytics products offer data, it often lacks actionable insights for contact center and CX leaders.

This lack of a comprehensive solution was outlined by the companies as the key reason for the merger. They argue that while large CCaaS providers claim to offer this, their real-time assistance and post-interaction analytics remain limited, with a primary focus on core communication services.

“Our promise is to provide the fastest ROI, easiest-to-use solution, and most trustworthy insights that our customers can act on to maximize business outcomes,” explained Beasley.

By combining the capabilities of Tethr and Awaken Intelligence, we’re providing our customers with a unified and comprehensive platform to optimize the agent and customer experience.

So, let’s delve deeper into the nitty gritty of how the two tech solutions will work together.

First and foremost, Creovai will offer users real-time agent guidance and post-interaction analytics.

While current Tethr and Awaken Intelligence customers will retain their existing capabilities, they will also now have the added option of integrating real-time assistance and analytics into a single solution.

Moreover, Creovai agents will benefit from a secure, AI-powered assistant that provides real-time alerts and summaries – simplifying their tasks, reducing average handling times, and enhancing customer satisfaction.

The benefits for contact center and CX leaders include access to in-depth insights from customer and agent conversations, which are presented these through intuitive dashboards aligned with the following key business goals:

In addition, leaders will receive AI-driven predictive scores for customer effort, satisfaction, sentiment, and quality assurance – helping companies identify and act on high-impact opportunities to coach agents and enhance customer experience.

Interestingly, the biggest merger news this year never actually materialized.

Despite appearing to be on the cusp of completion back in April, the Salesforce-Informatica acquisition fell through, reportedly due to a disagreement on price.

However, in the aftermath of the merger that never was, Salesforce recently provided insights into the company’s new marketing and acquisitions (M&A) framework during an earnings call.

While Salesforce’s Chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff, confirmed that the CRM provider will continue to invest in “inorganic innovations,” he emphasized that any acquisitions would adhere to the company’s M&A framework.

For large-scale acquisitions, Salesforce will seek companies with best-in-class assets, a clear timeline for value accretion, and a strong balance sheet.

Benioff cited the recent acquisition of Spiff, a compensation management software provider, as an example of the deals they are now targeting.