The CEO of the company that Nice bought: “It’s hard to refuse a billion dollar offer”

According to him, “almost no one to date has sold a company in our field for more than a billion dollars. We sold for the highest price, except for Intercom which was sold for 3.6 billion dollars (to the software giant Salesforce, two weeks ago, NA). But they have revenues of $400 million.”

Heltwig also explained that “if someone puts a billion dollars in front of you, it’s a little hard to say no, isn’t it? Obviously, if there was a reality where a company, let’s say, take 800 million dollars today and if you continue to be successful, you might earn 3 billion dollars, that would be a different story. But of course there is no such thing.” “Third,” says Heltwig, “we as founders get big incentives in Nice’s business, so we can increase that number for us as well.”

At the company’s annual conference in London, Nice stated today that the integration of Cognigy into Nice has actually already been completed. In the latest reports in May, the company stated that “the integration is progressing faster than expected”.

Following the acquisition of Cognigy, Nice claims that it is the only company in the world that provides a customer experience platform using end-to-end AI, which makes it possible to solve problems for customers in seconds, such as managing flight cancellations, finding an alternative flight, returning money to the customer, or managing the return and exchange of clothing and fashion products easily, and even synchronizing between the regulation of countries and 100 different languages.

The company also provides management solutions for the customer service centers as well as for the managers of the centers and even teaches the AI ​​how to solve problems. According to Nice, it has 25 billion AI interactions a year—continuing to improve its AI to improve the next AI conversation.

Heltwig noted that last year we did something that I am extraordinarily proud of. On our platform, we’ve processed more than 2 billion interactions. Our deployment has grown over 500% in one year. We added a record number of new customers.

The AI ​​agents take care of you

To explain the importance of NICE’s AI platform, Heltwig gives a “real life” example – in April, the pilots of the German airline Lufthansa decided to go on strike. “It was a disaster. Everyone shut down, including ground crews. Tens of thousands of passengers were stuck, and received a flight cancellation message on the phone. But you have to remember that these are people: maybe it’s a family that saved for several years to go on a trip, maybe a couple that is just going on a honeymoon, or a company’s sales team. Until today, you would call customer service, wait because everyone is calling at the same time. You are transferred between representatives, you explain everything again, and this leads to complete frustration. It is a nightmare for The customers but also for the service representatives. The wait times are increasing and every minute on hold means your customers are wondering if they really should stay your customers.

“But it could be different. In the world of Nice customer service, Lufthansa didn’t wait for the calls to flood its customer service, it saw it coming, identified each passenger and knew the history, the flight routes, and how to provide a solution. Before most of them even picked up their phone, they got a message but instead of “flight cancelled” they got a message “Here is your new flight. Or if there can’t be a new flight, here’s your refund. We took care of you. And if this is not the solution you wanted – here are our artificial intelligence agents who can also help you over the phone, in the app and on the website. Over seven days we processed 20 million interactions on one single event that happened, rebookings, refunds, issuing vouchers, rebooking hotels.

“Our artificial intelligence closed the loop from end to end. The honeymoon couple didn’t spend the morning in a frustrating wait and Lufthansa turned a crisis into a reality where their customers felt cared for. This is what artificial intelligence means.”

“Genesis did something stupid”

Heltwig added that “as part of the deal with NICE, one condition was important to me and the team – that we enter into a partnership with NICE only if Cognigy remains available to every customer as an independent platform in addition to being integrated into NICE.

“Because before the purchase we had customers who used NICE, others used Genesis (one of NICE’s biggest competitors, NA) and others Cisco. Nice kept that promise. Today Cognigy is still offered independently on top of Genesis, Cisco and more. But it’s clear that artificial intelligence agents only really shine on the platform they live on.”

But Genesis didn’t like the idea and Heltwig pointed out that “they’re not ready (to continue and allow its customers to work with Cogniji after it was acquired by Nice). According to Heltwig, “They’re not ready, but not bad. Genesis removed us from their marketplace which is completely stupid. Let’s say you are a Genesis customer and up until now you would have bought it through their marketplace. They would take 20%. Now they have removed us from the market, but now you buy directly from us, get a 10% discount, it’s cheaper for you, we earn 10% more. Genesis loses everything. It’s stupid.”