Facebook, a company well-known for investing in some of the most transformative startups in the world, recently revealed that it would be purchasing a new company. At the end of November, Facebook announced the acquisition of a pioneering customer relationship management startup, Kustomer. Although the full details of the acquisition aren’t available, the business was valued at just over $1 billion, according to sources.
Kustomer provides customer service teams with better insights and a more unified view of the people that they’re connecting with. The next-gen CRM solution could be a powerful tool on Facebook’s belt, especially as more companies use tools like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp for customer conversations.
An Interesting Acquisition for Facebook
Though purchasing an innovative company is nothing new for Facebook, it’s more common for the company to focus on consumer-centric businesses, like Giphy, and WhatsApp.
However, the acquisition of Kustomer could be an interesting step in the right direction for Facebook if it wants to increase its appeal with business leaders. The purchase of Kustomer should mean that the businesses using Facebook’s communication tools now will be able to offer better customer service going forward.
Facebook isn’t alone in its decision to purchase a company that might help with its customer experience strategy. Snap also purchased Voca.ai earlier in November, a company known for creating AI voice agents for the contact centre.
According to Facebook, today’s companies are adjusting to an evolving online environment, where new texts and messages are increasingly appearing at the heart of customer conversation. According to a blog post from the Facebook team, around 175 million people contact companies through WhatsApp alone.