American experience management company Qualtrics recently announced it had acquired Usermind, a Seattle-based marketing startup offering customer experience solutions.
Named one of the industry leaders in The Forrester Wave: Journey Orchestration Platforms Q2 2020 report, Usermind is expected to strengthen Qualtric’s XM Directory.
With over 4 billion customer and employee profiles, Qualtric’s platform is used by thousands of organizations like Autodesk, Cisco, Morgan Stanley, BMW, General Electrics, and American Express.
Brad Anderson, President of Products and Services at Qualtrics, referred to the importance that customer experience has by stating,
“Our research shows that more than 60% of consumers are likely to switch brands after just a single poor experience. This means that organizations only have one chance to get the experience right. In a world where switching costs have never been lower, customers have already moved on by the time you notice they’re gone. Organizations need contextual data to answer these questions in order to proactively prevent poor experiences.”
Ever since being founded in 2013, Usermind has raised $60.2 million in total funding with its latest Series C funding round raising $14 million and counting with the participation of important investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, and WestRiver Group.
Prior to the announcement the startup had laid off 15 employees in March of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which represented 25% of its staff at this time.
Usermind’s Co-Founder and CEO Michel Feaster referred to 2020 as a “black Swan, COVID, a year movie nightmares became a thing of reality”.
However, the spike in the use of digital platforms during the lockdown and social distancing plans implemented around the world, resulted in the startup’s software gaining adoption and popularity among e-commerce platforms.
Now, the acquisition will accelerate the impact of Usermind by providing the, “opportunity to bring Journey Orchestration & Journey Analytics to the masses,” according to Feaster.