SAN FRANCISCO: Medallia Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Decibel, a leader in digital experience analytics, in $160 million cash deal, a news release said.

With this acquisition, Medallia’s leading customer experience and engagement platform will seamlessly include always-on, unsolicited digital feedback, providing a single view of all customers and prospective customers at every point of their journey across all channels.

According to Alan Webber, IDC vice president for customer experience research, IDC expects that in 2021 companies will spend $1.6T on technology to digitally transform their business.

“Customer experience (CX) and closely aligned business functions will be the main beneficiaries of this spending — and building out digital resiliency in their customer experience is a top reason why they are doing it. Medallia’s acquisition of Decibel is exciting because this combination enables digital resiliency by bringing together common data and omnichannel experience understanding for both customers and employees in order to drive persistent engagement across ubiquitous business functions,” said Webber.

“There has been a massive shift to digital and the Decibel acquisition will add vital digital journey and experience capabilities, providing even more value to our customers and prospects. The addition of Decibel uniquely positions Medallia as the only experience vendor that brings together the physical world, contact center and digital in a single signal platform. Our digital investments mark us out as the feedback system of record that makes all other systems customer aware,” stated Leslie Stretch, chief executive officer of Medallia.

“Following a strong partnership, Medallia’s approach to us came as a welcome surprise. It is our mission to rid the world of digital frustration and create effortless experiences. Our unparalleled AI automatically identifies and prioritizes experience issues, and their scale, showing brands what actions are needed to grow digital revenue. Medallia’s growth mentality and culture fits hand in glove with ours, which means we can now move at an even faster pace to help companies deliver the experiences customers expect and demand,” said Ben Harris, CEO and Co-Founder of Decibel.

Decibel’s technology is used by companies of all sizes spanning a large cross section of verticals including retail, financial services, hospitality and travel and media including Adidas, Sony, CVS and Fidelity International.

Under the terms of the agreement, Medallia will acquire Decibel for approximately $160 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to close in March 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.

Medallia (NYSE: MDLA) is the pioneer and market leader in customer, employee, citizen and patient experience. The company’s award-winning SaaS platform, Medallia Experience Cloud, is becoming the experience system of record that makes all other applications customer and employee aware. www.medallia.com

The world’s leading brands – including Fidelity, Adidas, and British Airways – harness Decibel for better conversions, more sales, and increased customer loyalty across their digital offerings. www.decibel.com