KANA announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Hipbone, a provider of online customer interaction solutions. The agreement is expected to close in the first quarter of 2004. Hipbone was founded in 1998 and provides co-browsing, live chat and file sharing technologies for customer support and sales executives within banks, brokerage services and other financial institutions. These products allow companies to provide live, on-line assistance at critical and opportune times, bringing the customer-agent exchange closer to that of an in-store, in-person encounter.
The addition of Hipbones web-collaboration solutions to KANAs knowledge-powered iCARE suite expands our reach to all channels of customer interactions and completes our multi-channel solution, said Brian Kelly, executive vice president of products at KANA. Our customers and prospects have been asking for web-collaboration and see tremendous value in an integrated solution. As the market leader in on-line customer interaction solutions, Hipbone will immediately increase the value of our product line and our industry solutions.
The addition of Hipbones on-line assisted service channel to the KANA iCARE suite combines web-collaboration in assisting consumers through high-value on-line transactions with KANA‘s approach to managing customer relationships. The combination of these two solutions will also provide agent to agent collaboration within the contact center. KANA will continue to offer Hipbone as a stand-alone product and will integrate the web-collaboration solution into KANA Response, KANA Contact Center and KANA IQ.
With this acquisition, KANA aims at extending its reach by expanding the companys vertical market solutions, responding to customer requests for standalone web-collaboration solutions. KANA will also integrate Hipbone products into the companys growing vertical market product lines.
2004-01-06
Em Foco – Empresa