NICE Ltd.

NICE Ltd. (נייס) is an Israeli technology company specializing in customer relations management software (NICE CXone), artificial intelligence, and digital and workforce engagement management. The company serves various industries, such as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, outsourcers, retail, media, travel, service providers, and utilities.

The company first listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1996. It is also listed on TASE, where it is part of the TA-35 Index.

History
NICE was founded in 1986 as Neptune Intelligence Computer Engineering (NICE) in Israel. Much of the early technology developed by NICE was for contact centers, financial services and business intelligence markets. The computer engineers that founded NICE created a telephony voice recording system in the early 90s, followed by ATM software under the subsidiary, NICECom. The ATM vendor quickly grew its operations in the 90s and NICE sold its subsidiary to 3Com in 1994 for $54 million. In 2007, NICE acquired Actimize for $280 million. The company developed risk management software for various markets, identifying risks for its customers.

In 2011 NICE acquired UK-based Fizzback, with the value of the deal said to be $80 million. The UK company specialized in customer feedback, collecting real-time customer experience information. At the time of acquisition, Fizzback processed 150 million individual feedback reports; many of these reports taken in real-time from social media platforms. During the same year, NICE announced the acquisition of analytics firm, Merced Systems for $150 million. Merced was a provider of performance management services, offered predominantly as software as a service with additional analytics and workforce optimization.

In 2014, Zeevi Bregman left his role as CEO, to be replaced by Barak Eilam who previously served as President, a role he had held for 18 months before becoming CEO. NICE relocated its headquarters to a new 60,000 square foot office building on the Hudson River waterfront in 2015.

In 2016, NICE acquired inContact for a reported $960 million allowing NICE to expand their customer services offering and integrate a cloud contact center, using a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) approach. Paul Jarman of inContact would continue as CEO to lead the inContact division once integrated into NICE.

In 2018, NICE acquired The Mattersight Corporation that was founded as a behavioral analytics software company in 1994, before diversifying into cloud analytics and its SaaS offering. The agreed deal was $90 million, which made the total acquisition price 25% above share value and Mattersight's service offering was integrated into NICE.

In May 2019, NICE acquired Brand Embassy allow NICE to manage customer interactions across a greater number of platforms, including social media. According to BizJournals, this would include 30 additional channels, such as Facebook, WhatsApp and LinkedIn.

In April 2021, it was announced that NICE would be acquiring MindTouch, a San Diego-based knowledge management company. It was founded in 2005 it offered KM (knowledge management) to maximize customer lifetime value. NICE rebranded the platform as CXone Expert. Recently, NICE has been touted by the media as a potential benefactor to the growth of the AI and chatbot industries. In 2021, growth in numerous tech sectors led to NICE receiving a valuation of $17 billion, making it the most valuable company in Israel. During the same period, the company partnered with Google Cloud with the aim of creating a more effective customer service applications for traditional contact centers. At Interactions Live 2022, NICE demonstrated how brands can build frictionless customer experiences and how the Customer Experience Interactions (CXi) framework can assist the creation of these frictionless experiences. The line-up of speakers included 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush.

In June 2023, NICE was recognized by Frost & Sullivan with its 2023 Best Practices Company of the Year Award for Conversational AI.

Products & services
NICE specializes in AI and customer experience software, or CX as it is often abbreviated to. After inContact became part of the company's product portfolio in 2016, it allowed the company to expand its contact center as a service (CCaaS) offering.

CXone
CXone is part of NICE's product offering. In 2021, NICE surpassed $1 billion in cloud revenue. In March 2023, the platform reached the milestone of having one million users.

In early 2023, NICE announced the industry's first conversational CX with ChatGPT-enabled CXone. CX Network magazine stated the offering would be ideal for contact centres where customers were unable to wait for callbacks due to the nature of their inquiry. NICE also announced that CXone customers in Europe would now experience the first "EU Sovereign" CCaaS platform on the continent. After working with various regulatory bodies in the European Union, data centers, and also cloud providers, NICE delivered the first CX platform where all data passing through it would remain within the EU.

Enlighten
Enlighten is NICE's artificial intelligence engine to help companies to "engage, predict and take actions to improve agent empowerment, consumer experiences, and operational excellence." At the time of the service's launch, Enlighten would allow for deeper insights and more personalization.

NICE launched Enlighten Copilot, Enlighten Autopilot and Enlighten Actions at NICE's Interactions 2023 event. This was seen by some within the CX industry as the first generative AI solution for large enterprises.

Livevox
On December 26, 2023, NICE finalized the acquisition of LiveVox Inc. This acquisition significantly expanded the feature set of NICE's CXone platform, particularly within the Outbound Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) market. LiveVox's offerings include notable products like Human Call Initiator (HCI), which facilitates semi-automated outbound call campaigns while ensuring adherence to U.S. regulations. Additionally, LiveVox offers capabilities like Human Text Intiator (HTI), the SMS counterpart to HCI. These solutions are very attractive to various industries, including debt collection, banking, healthcare, and sales.

Media Findings
In 2019, NICE released a study on internal business performance and how that effected customer experience, with the main finding that companies in Australia and the United States both over estimate the quality of their customer experience.

NICE’s 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Report revealed that there are major gaps between what customers think about the support they receive and how seriously business leaders are taking their expectations.