In Facebook’s latest move it has now acquired a New York-based software company called Kustomer Inc.
Kustomer Inc. is a customer service CRM platform that is, it helps businesses manage customer conversations from multiple services on one dashboard. Such tools, help the clients to manage their communications with customers via phone, email, text, or direct messages in specific apps, such as WhatsApp or Messenger. The customer-service company also offers automated tools so companies can handle easier customer requests using bots.
Reportedly, the value of the deal is more than $1 billion and this information has been shared a person familiar with the deal has asked not to be named.
To strengthen their efforts to monetize its expanding messaging business that includes customer-services like WhatsApp and Messenger, chat apps that help companies interact with people, Facebook Inc. has sealed the deal with Kustomer.
In a blog post, executives of the tech giant said that whenever the customer service of a company receives a call they have to answer it, but lately, texts and messages have become as important as phone calls, therefore businesses need to adapt to the concept of customer care via text messages.
Whatsapp is the world’s most popular messaging service, and Facebook has made customer service an important part of its business strategy on this chat app. The company is now also working on launching a new payments feature in important markets like Brazil. It has also signed deals in India and Indonesia, with some commerce related businesses.
Large businesses are charged to message customers on the app instead of an email, in this way WhatsApp makes money. Businesses can manage these interactions on a single interface via customer service platforms like Kustomer, which uses the software of WhatsApp.
Executives of Facebook say that while the acquisition goes through the regulatory review Kustomer, will operate its business as usual without any change.
Due to previous acquisitions, Facebook is still under antitrust scrutiny, so it is still unclear whether regulators will take the issue of this deal. Chief Operating Officer of WhatsApp, Matt Idema has said that even though Facebook will own one of the tools, that other customer service business will still be able to offer Whatsapp corporate messaging to their customers.
Idema also added that Kustomer works best with businesses that need 20 to 100 customer service agents. It has more than 200 employees. The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed yet and representatives of Facebook declined to comment on it.
