Sellers will be connected to the sound – Newspaper Kommersant No. 38 (7483) dated 03/06/2023
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VimpelCom has acquired a 20% stake in Voca Tech, a developer of the audio system used to analyze the quality of customer service in retail. Before the announcement of the deal, the Russian structure of the company was taken over by the Kazakh Dybys Tech, this step is explained by the desire to enter the market of the CIS countries. Tele2 has also been using Voca Tech solutions since 2019, while MegaFon relies on a video analytics system. Experts believe that VimpelCom invested in Voca Tech with the expectation of introducing its technology in large networks, where the need for such devices can be in the tens of thousands.
Vimpelcom told Kommersant that the operator had acquired a 20% stake in the head structure of the developers of the voice analytics system for Voca Tech retail, the Kazakh LLP Dybys Tech. This is a system that allows you to evaluate the conversations of company employees with customers using badges with microphones and ASR technology (automatic voice recognition). The amount of the deal was not disclosed by VimpelCom.
The Russian legal entity Voca Tech (Voka-Tech LLC) until February 21 belonged to Andrey Grishkin (75%) and Bella Mutallapova (25%). The company’s sales revenue in 2021 amounted to 62.2 million rubles, net profit – 39 million rubles. As part of the deal, the asset could be valued at a multiplier of 6-10 revenues for 2022, a Kommersant source in one of the venture funds said. “Based on the revenue of Voka-Tech for 2021, the share acquired by VimpelCom could cost 74.6–124.4 million rubles,” he noted.
At the end of February, 100% of Voka-Tech was transferred to Kazakhstan’s Dybys Tech. Voca Tech representatives did not disclose who owns the remaining 80% of the new parent company. They explained the creation of the structure in Kazakhstan with the intention to develop business in the CIS.
Vimpelcom clarified that they are already selling Voca Tech audio badges to companies in various sectors, and also conducted a pilot to use them in some Beeline offices for corporate clients. “In 2023, it is planned to scale the solution to other B2B offices,” they said. The company did not specify whether the badges will be used in the retail network.
Tele2, which began to evaluate the quality of work of retail employees using Voca Tech back in 2019, noted that “more than half of the outlets are connected to the monitoring system.” MegaFon Sales Director David Borzilov said that the company is not interested in introducing audio badges in retail: “We use other tools, such as video analytics, to analyze the quality of customer service.” MTS declined to comment.
In addition to Voca Tech solutions, the audio badge market in Russia is represented by notAnotherOne’s Speechmate devices (51% owned by Yadro), SmartBadge by SberDevices (renamed SalyutDevices by 2023 and taken out of Sberbank’s ownership). In January, Rostec announced the completion of pilot projects for the use of Oktava DM audio badges.
“There are no major players and billions of dollars in turnover in the segment yet, but the dynamics are positive,” says Vitaly Kitaev, director of product development at Speechmate. “There is an active demand from medium and large businesses. Smart players have become accustomed to the fact that the best decisions are made based on data, and in recent years have been digitizing everything possible. But one of the undigitized, and therefore poorly controlled, blocks remains retail sales.” In this segment, the top manager adds, “the human factor still plays too strong a role, so understanding managers are implementing speech analytics.”
Mikhail Burmistrov, General Director of Infoline-Analytics, believes that audio badges will become a standard tool for any specialists interacting with a client in the next couple of years. “It is expedient for VimpelCom to focus it not only on its own retail – be that as it may, these are only a few thousand stores. There are retailers where the need for such devices can be in the tens of thousands,” he says. The growing popularity of badges, in his opinion, is largely due to the expansion of artificial intelligence capabilities in terms of efficient decoding and analysis of text, as well as verification with scripts.
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