UK-based firm opens web development office in Manchester

Facility to headquarter U.S. front-end operations

Customer engagement company JRNI Inc. has opened its first U.S. web development office at 66 Hanover St. in Manchester, part of what it calls an aggressive U.S. growth and hiring strategy.

The company, which until this month was known as BookingBug, said the Manchester space will headquarter its U.S. development operations, led by a team of three front-end developers, with a total of seven expected to work there by the end of the year. The company, which is based in London, also has an office in Boston.

“Manchester represents the next step in our U.S. growth because the city is a vibrant technology and entrepreneurial hub that boasts top talent from the state’s top universities,” said Nick Barnes, JRNI’s head of customer experience. “The office nicely complements our development efforts in London and guarantees that we have a team available around the clock. We’re looking forward to immersing ourselves in the Manchester community, and growing our development operations in New Hampshire.”

Michael Bergeron, senior business development manager for the state Department of Business and Economic Affairs, pointed to the continued growth of Manchester as a tech hub, called the city’s downtown “a perfect fit” for the company “because they can attract local college graduates who want to live and work in a fast-growing and challenging technology community.”

When JRNI announced its rebranding, the company said it signaled a shift from solely being a customer engagement platform to adding applications that put so-called “omnichannel conversion” at the heart of the enterprise. Omnichannel focuses on providing customers with a seamless shopping experience, whether they’re shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, by telephone, or in a brick-and-mortar store.

JRNI’s offerings include Appointments, Events and Queuing applications, along with Call Center and Insights, designed to help organizations drive online traffic in-store/in-branch through conversion. Its customer engagement platform enables companies to interact with customers, online to offline, and across lines of business, while providing a detailed view of the full customer “journey.”

Among the company’s customers are: U.S. Bank; ANZ, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group; John Lewis & Partners, a department store chain in the United Kingdom; and Lego.