Bird has announced an "AI-first" CRM for "marketing, sales, service, and payments".
The move signals an overhaul of its core platform, which dropped off the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for CPaaS due to this strategy shift.
That news foreshadowed this launch, which Robert Vis, CEO of Bird (formerly MessageBird), revealed is the culmination of 3.5 years of strategizing.
"This is more than a redesign; it's a complete re-architecture," he wrote on LinkedIn.
"[The CRM is] built from the ground up with separate components, ensuring seamless compatibility with third-party applications.
Whether you use us as your standalone CRM or integrate us with your existing software, we're here to supercharge your capabilities!
A customer data platform (CDP) is the spider's head within that standalone platform.
Meanwhile, its voice and various digital communication APIs are the legs, sending conversational insights up to the brain, which organizes cross-functional, first- and third-party data.
Yet, businesses may also blend those APIs with AI to design new customer contact strategies that – according to the CEO – will allow brands to communicate in the "best and most efficient way."
"It's your one-stop-shop, the 360 solution, the end-all-be-all," concluded Vis.
The Possibilities Are "Limitless" But "Not Groundbreaking"
Building on Vis’s one-stop-shop comments, Tim Kroggel, VP of Sales at Bird, said:
The possibilities our customers gain from partnering with a vertically and horizontally integrated communication stack are limitless.
"Brands can seamlessly integrate via an API to enhance their existing stack, or they can opt to completely replace their Martech (e.g., Braze, Attentive, Klaviyo, Salesforce), Sales (e.g., Aircall, Dialpad, Talkdesk), or Customer Service (e.g., Zendesk, Front, Freshworks) stack with our solution and cut out the middleman."
In making this move, Bird aims to differentiate its platform and shift further from the CPaaS market, which is becoming increasingly crowded.
Recognizing this, Rob Kurver, Founding Partner of the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance, believes that it’s "great" that Bird is exploring new opportunities to exploit the value of its broad CPaaS portfolio.
However, he pinpoints an overlap in its strategy with CM.com and questions whether the solution really is the "end-all-be-all".
