Sabio builds Rapport with £30m M&A warchest

Comms integrator has used some of the investment it took on from Lyceum last summer to buy customer experience specialist Rapport

Comms integrator Sabio has made its first acquisition since selling a controlling stake to Lyceum Capital last July, in the form of Rapport.

Based in Surrey, Rapport offers SaaS customer experience analysis tools for contact centres and counts Thames Water, the BBC, ITV and British Gas among its clients.

Contact centre specialist Sabio was gifted a £30m warchest from Lyceum to pursue organic and inorganic growth, and Rapport marks its opening gambit in this strategy.

Talking to CRN, Mike Andrews, Sabio's vice president for go-to-market (pictured), said Rapport fulfils Sabio's two goals of broadening its customer footprint and increasing the breadth of portfolio it offers.

"We're not disclosing the details of the size of the acquisition - what we are focusing on is the opportunity and capability it brings us," he said.

"It's bringing on board a few blue-chip customers such as BBC TV Licensing and Thames Water, and they are definitely attractive. The key focus is really the ability of this solution to extend our customer engagement analytics portfolio."

Rapport's tools enable firms to "measure the end-to-end customer experience", which many organisations struggle with, Andrews claimed.

"This tool gives us the ability to look at the customer experience externally and provide an objective external view on what the experience of getting through to a call centre is like. It can increase the value we provide to existing customers."

Further acquisitions that bolster Sabio's core skills in areas such as digital engagement, omni-channel contact centre, analytics and managed services are likely, Andrews claimed.

"We are completely focused on customer experience and acquisitions we make will fit into that space," he said.

Andrews said he had full confidence in Sabio's partnership with Avaya, which entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January and has been the subject of repeated attacks from competitors.

"It's not our place to comment on Avaya's business status, but we are confident in Avaya," he said. "One of the key points to remember is that we are particularly strong in our breadth of capability around the Avaya portfolio. We are very self-sufficient: 96 per cent of support cases we resolve ourselves, so customers view us as a very safe pair of hands."