Acquisition enhances the Conversation Cloud with intelligent orchestration and expanded AI capabilities, helping regulated industries reduce friction, increase completion rates, and connect with customers where they are
Smart Communications, a leading technology company focused on helping highly-regulated organizations engage in more meaningful customer conversations, today announced its acquisition of Pendula, a trusted provider of intelligent orchestration and digital delivery technology. Pendula's customer engagement solution is renowned for helping enterprises complete their most critical customer interactions through personalized, intelligent, cross-channel engagement.
Today's customers expect interactions that are faster and smarter than ever across an ever-expanding range of channels. Enterprises are under increasing pressure to meet these expectations by automating conversations and interactions that are not only timely and personalized but also orchestrated across multiple channels. Smart Communications' latest State of Customer Conversations report found that only 54% of customers are satisfied with the omnichannel experiences provided by their financial services, insurance, and healthcare providers a number that has declined year over year.
This growing dissatisfaction highlights a critical gap between customer expectations and what organizations can deliver. Many still rely on fragmented systems and manual follow-ups, resulting in incomplete transactions, missed outcomes, and lost trust.
Smart Communications' acquisition of Pendula addresses those challenges head-on by expanding its Conversation Cloud platform with intelligent orchestration capabilities. The result is a solution that reduces friction, increases completion rates, and extends engagement across high-performing digital channels such as SMS, email, WhatsApp, and RCS, helping heavily regulated enterprises connect with customers where they are, and ensuring every interaction leads to action.
"For Smart Communications, the future has always been about enabling smarter, more meaningful experiences with customers," said Leigh Segall, CEO of Smart Communications. "The acquisition of Pendula is the natural next step in our evolution, solving a key challenge our clients face: orchestrating and completing complex, high-value customer interactions across digital channels, at scale. It also strengthens the AI capabilities already embedded into the Conversation Cloud enhancing decisioning, automation, and personalization to help our customers engage more intelligently and drive better outcomes across every touchpoint.
Accelerating AI-Powered Conversations with Pendula's Intelligence Suite
As part of the integration, Smart Communications will bring Pendula'sIntelligence Suite into the Conversation Cloud, unlocking powerful new AI capabilities for smarter, faster, and more personalized conversations. The suite includes analytics, AI decisioning, and configurable AI agents that work within precise workflows and guardrails-ensuring alignment with each organization's brand, goals, and compliance needs. From identifying trends and forecasting customer needs to delivering personalized responses and seamless handoffs to human experts, this AI-powered layer will help enterprises transform data into action and drive deeper engagement across every channel.
Pendula's orchestration technology includes intelligent failover capabilities, ensuring that if a message fails to reach a customer via one channel, it is automatically rerouted to the next best channel. This significantly increases completion rates and reduces manual effort. Decisioning logic can be configured to guide the customer to their desired outcome and respond or redirect automatically based on natural language customer inputs. The solution offers seamless integration across the Conversation Cloud platform, and pre-built connectors for the world's most trusted enterprise systems including Salesforce, AWS, Snowflake, Zendesk, Stripe and more.
The acquisition strengthens Smart Communications' ability to serve the complex needs of enterprises in highly-regulated industries where customer attention is limited, compliance is non-negotiable, and operational efficiency is critical. Pendula technology extends the Conversation Cloud with proven, enterprise-grade orchestration capabilities that help organizations increase completion rates, reduce manual effort, and ensure every interaction is secure, compliant, and connected across channels. Like all Conversation Cloud solutions, Pendula technology is built to meet the highest standards for security and compliance.
"At Pendula, we've always believed that today's customers want real conversations, not one-way broadcasts," said Alex Colvin, CEO of Pendula. "By joining Smart Communications, we are combining our orchestration expertise with the global reach and proven capabilities of the Conversation Cloud platform. Together, we will help enterprises move faster, connect more intelligently, and deliver personalized experiences that drive action at scale."
About Smart Communications
Smart Communications is the trusted choice for regulated enterprises looking to modernize complex processes and connect with customers in the moments that matter most. Its Conversation Cloud platform powers frictionless, compliant, digital-first experiences through omnichannel communications, intelligent orchestration, secure data capture, and digital archival. More than 700 enterprises worldwide-including Zurich Insurance, Priority Health, The Pacific Financial Group, and The Bancorp-rely on Smart Communications to reduce compliance risk, boost operational efficiency, lower costs, and accelerate digital transformation. In 2025, the company was acquired by Cinven, a global private equity firm, to accelerate international expansion and further scale its platform in regulated markets. Today, with over 30 pre-built connectors, Smart Communications integrates seamlessly with trusted enterprise systems including Salesforce, AWS, Guidewire, DuckCreek, OneSpan, and Pega, and powers more than 60 billion mission-critical customer conversations each year. For more information, visit www.smartcommunications.com.
About Pendula
Pendula is a leading customer engagement solution. Founded in 2017, the company has built a reputation for delivering innovative solutions that increase engagement, reduce churn and maximise customer lifetime values for leading brands like Shippit, University of London, Origin Energy, and Amaysim. With a commitment to security, efficiency, and customer success, Pendula continues to be a trusted partner for companies looking to drive better customer conversations.
For more information, visit pendula.com.
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