Business and Marketing

The two companies find common ground in a commitment to customer experience as a core business competency.

Allegiance CEO Carine Clark

Maritz, the St. Louis-based motivational marketing company, announced the acquisition of Allegiance Software and revealed plans to merge it with Maritz Research to form a stand-alone company called MaritzCX.

Drawing on Allegiance's software platform and the data and specific industry experience of Maritz, the new company will endeavor to create customer experience operations for clients that will help them better interact with customers individually and in real time. Current Allegiance president and CEO Carine Clark will carry over those titles to MaritzCX, which will be based in Salt Lake City. The business will field 18 offices and serve some 500 clients globally.

"The focus of the company won't be on data collection and scores, but on how we're driving change at a client organization; how its staff can see data faster, and react more personally," says Allegiance EVP of Marketing Chris Cottle. "If we're doing that right we'll help clients retain more customers, grow faster, and increase lifetime value."

Maritz had been working on a customer experience project with Allegiance for most of the last year and both found a common philosophical commitment to customer experience. “CX has reached its arrival point. A CX platform and solution is just as important as ERP or CRM today,” Cottle says. “We're seeing interest in the C-suite and we're acting on that."

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