SOUTH JORDAN — Customer experience platform InMoment announced Wednesday it is being acquired by Chicago-based private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners.
While the value of the deal has not been released, 17-year-old InMoment has previously drawn some $34 million in venture funding. The company has carved out its own niche in the burgeoning customer experience market by leveraging survey data alongside other customer interaction information to provide its clients with insight about business performance across multiple metrics.
While another Utah-based customer experience company, Qualtrics, has garnered a lot of attention as one of the biggest companies in the sector and was acquired by European enterprise software giant SAP in an $8 billion deal announced late last year, InMoment CEO Andrew Joiner told the Deseret News his company has innovated in areas that distinguish it from its neighbors to the south.
"We think beyond surveys, to get to the heart of the customer experience," Joiner said. "Experiences are complex and dynamic and we have unique way of using our science to understand that."
Customer experience is a term that's been thrown around a lot in the tech realm, particularly as it's a relatively new business sector and one in which Utah companies have found a high level of success in building.
Essentially, the "customer experience" is an individual's net takeaway, or perception, of a company after they've had an interaction, be it a purchase, use of a service or even just an inquiry. Did that person feel like they paid too much? Did the product or service live up to the customer's expectations? Did they interact with an employee and, if so, how did that go? Would they buy from the company again? All questions that customer experience platforms like InMoment not only help a client to answer but, when failures or underperformance are highlighted, help to rectify.
InMoment counts some heavy hitting companies like Starbucks, Tiffany and Co., Nike, VW and others among its clients, and Joiner said the market continues to expand.
"Every company has a need to be able to sift out the signal from the noise when it comes to customer experience," Joiner said. "Our approach is to not just ask more questions but enable a company to obtain value … through creating a better experience for their customers."
Joiner noted one of InMoment's biggest current challenges is keeping up with demand, and the new majority investment will help turbocharge InMoment's growth capabilities.
Concurrent with the acquisition deal, InMoment has appointed John Lewis, former global president of Nielsen Holdings PLC and current executive partner at Madison Dearborn Partners, as executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.
Madison Dearborn managing partner Scott Pasquini celebrated the potential of the newly joined efforts in a statement.
“InMoment’s XI Platform offers the customer experience management sector a truly innovative approach, one that enables companies to seamlessly collect and connect first- and third-party data sources to provide unique insights into the experience and sentiment of their customers," Pasquini said. "InMoment excels at taking customer understanding beyond the survey, and we are excited to support InMoment’s strong momentum as it continues to deliver best-in-class analytics and services to companies globally.”