LumenVox Acquired by Capacity

Local leading speech-enabling software provider LumenVox has been acquired by St. Louis-based AI-powered support automation platform, Capacity. The deal allows LumenVox to bring the power of voice to customers worldwide, facilitating billions of customer interactions. St. Louis-based SaaS provider Denim Social was also absorbed in the new partnership with Capacity. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Capacity is a support automation platform that uses AI to deflect emails, tickets, and phone calls so support teams can do their best work. With its recent acquisitions, Capacity will be able to automate team member and customer support across multiple channels, including web, email, text messaging, voice and social media,” Capacity CEO David Karandish told the Business Journal.

Since founding Capacity in 2017, Karandish has raised more than $62 million in funding. Before its launch, the serial entrepreneur built and sold Answers.com for $950 million.

“LumenVox offers a variety of AI-driven speech recognition technology products that can be incorporated into broader software platforms and applications,” he added. “Its flagship product — Automated Speech Recognition – easily recognizes a wide variety of languages and dialects. As part of the Capacity Team, LumenVox products gain exceptional AI capabilities that were not available before, dramatically extending and enhancing existing functionality.”

Time-Saving Voice Technology

LumenVox will retain its name for the time being.

“The right voice technology can save teams countless support hours,” LumenVox CEO Nigel Quinnin said. “Marrying LumenVox’s technology with the Capacity platform ensures voice is a seamless part of the omnichannel experience.”

Quinnin will lead Capacity’s voice initiatives.

LumenVox’s software portfolio consists of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) with transcription, Call Progress Analysis (CPA), Voice Biometrics, and Text-to-Speech (TTS).

The company was founded in 2001 by Edward Miller, as a subsidiary of Progressive Computing LLC. In 2014, Progressive Computing was sold to focus building efforts on LumenVox.

“The founders of LumenVox were running a successful call center business and found that market options for accurate speech technology were extremely limited and prohibitively expensive,” Karandish shared, who added that the company offers one of the most accurate and respected speech products on the market.

Global Track Record

LumenVox’s customers are worldwide, like South Africa’s Smartz Solutions, a cloud-based omnichannel communications platform. LumenVox said Smartz Solutions agents were wasting time listening to voicemail greetings that had been mischaracterized as “live answers.” Or they were sitting idle. Call blockers proved to be the culprit – new software was pushing calls straight to voicemail since a type of outmoded answering machine detection software was failing to identify that it was hearing a pre-recorded message. LumenVox said the deployment of its Call Progress Analysis service improved call categorization from 83% to 90% and resulted in more than 100,000 completed calls and hundreds of non-productive hours saved.

LumenVox has already begun integrating its technologies into Capacity, and the future appears promising.

“LumenVox was already working heavily on their next generation of ‘Neural’ Text To Speech (TTS) technology prior to the acquisition, and this effort continues,” Karandish said. “This will yield a new, much more natural sounding synthesized speech offering that will compete with the best available on the market.”

LumenVox

FOUNDED: 2001 as a subsidiary of Progressive Computing LLC
CEO: Nigel Quinnin
HEADQUARTERS: Mission Valley
EMPLOYEES: 130 with Capacity acquisition
BUSINESS: software
WEBSITE: lumenvox.com
NOTABLE: Every month, LumenVox analyzes 3 billion calls.