This week, it was reported that LogMeIn acquired intelligent assistant provider Nanorep for $50 million in total consideration. The acquisition signals further consolidation in the customer self-service marketplace.

Nanorep may not have been the most talked about provider of “chatbot” solutions, yet the Israel-based company, led by CEO Eli Campo, has been around since 2009. With over 500 customers at the time of the acquisition, Nanorep has a proven track record of deploying solutions in short order with solid analytics and the ability for customers to maintain control without additional professional services.

In a blog post offering insights into the acquisition, LogmeIn’s Dave Campbell, VP, Marketing writes that the company was looking to bolster its capabilities on the digital self-service side.

Just over a month ago, LogMeIn launched its ambitious Bold360 product. Bold360 is positioned as a soup to nuts customer engagement platform, providing support for all aspects of the customer lifecycle. The addition of Nanorep’s intelligent assistance tools seems like a good compliment to the existing Bold360 suite.

Nanorep leverages a proprietary natural language processing capability and offers a broad set of self-service technologies, including: knowledge management tools; integration to third party CRM, ticketing, and live chat systems; Facebook page widget; analytics to assess effectiveness of automated responses, including geographical origin of questions, trending topics; and more.

Nanorep has been using the trademarked term “contextual answers” to describe how its technology differs from that of competitors. The term describes a context-based approach to providing automated answers. For example, the automated assistant can be trained to take into account factors such as the customer’s location, account status, and the device or product they’re using. The goal is to provide personalized support that more intelligently addresses the customer’s concern. The automated assistant gets smarter over time through supervised learning at the hands of a trained human customer care agent.

As Techcrunch writer Ingrid Lunden notes in her article on the acquisition, competition among CRM providers is heating up. Strong NLP-powered and AI-supported self service tools are quickly becoming “table stakes” for CRM solutions. By paying $50 million for Nanorep, LogMeIn is showing its relevance and strength in an increasingly competitive market.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Intelligent Authentication, Articles