LogMeIn Inc. is the latest enterprise tech firm to jump on the chatbot bandwagon.

The publicly traded remote access provider today announced that it’s acquiring Israeli virtual assistant maker Nanorep Technologies Ltd. for $45 million. LogMeIn will pay out up to $5 million more over the next two years if certain business goals are met. It’s a solid exit for Nanorep, which had raised only about $6.7 million in funding from investors.

One of the reasons that LogMeIn paid such a premium is the startup’s large installed base. FedEx Corp., Intuit Inc., Vodafone Group Plc and roughly 500 other organizations are using its chatbot platform to support their customers. The assistant is designed to automatically handle help requests that are normally relegated to human staff.

Nanorep’s chatbot can draw upon a company’s knowledge base, order tracking application and other systems to generate answers in a natural-language format. A software as a service provider might employ the assistant to offer feature explainers, while online retailers could let users inquire about purchase status. Nanorep also makes it possible to customize responses based on various contextual details.

Among them is location. If one of a company’s shipping partners experiences delays, the chatbot could be configured to communicate the issue to customers in the affected region. Managers can control the assistant’s behavior through a centralized management dashboard that doubles as a tool for monitoring how well common support inquiries are answered.

LogMeIn intends to integrate the software with its recently launched Bold360 customer service platform. The company’s goal is to make help desk personnel more productive by automating the repetitive support tasks that usually take up most of their time. Nanorep’s technology could give this plan a major boost: The startup’s website claims that its chatbot can nearly halve the volume of customer requests that must be handled manually.

Today’s acquisition may well open up new upselling opportunities. Specifically, companies that use LogMeIn’s flagship remote access tools to provide technical support may be interested in deploying Nanorep to automate the resolution of frequently occurring issues. 

Image: Pixabay