Facebook Agrees to Acquire CRM Platform Kustomer

Facebook agreed to acquire customer-relationship-management platform Kustomer, which was named Adweek’s best customer experience platform in 2020. The Kustomer team—including co-founders Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel—will join Facebook, and Kustomer will continue to operate its platform and serve its clients. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The Kustomer platform brings customer-service conversations from multiple channels onto a single-screen view and enables customer-service representatives to automate repetitive tasks so that they can focus on the interactions where they are most needed. Facebook vice president of ads and business products Dan Levy and WhatsApp chief operating officer Matt Idema said in a Newsroom post Monday that the social network will provide resources for Kustomer to scale its business and improve and innovate its product offerings, adding that Facebook will continue to support the numerous CRM platform options available to businesses using its messaging services. Facebook said Kustomer clients will continue to own the data from interactions with customers, adding that the company eventually expects to host Kustomer data on secure Facebook infrastructure, at which point Facebook will act as a service provider at the instruction of its business customers. Levy and Idema clarified, “While Facebook will not automatically use Kustomer data to inform the ads that a user sees, businesses will have the option to use their data at Kustomer for their own marketing purposes, which may include separate advertising services on Facebook.” CEO Birnbaum wrote in a Kustomer blog post, “Once the acquisition closes, we look forward to working closely with Facebook, where we will continue to serve our customers and work with our partners as part of the Facebook family. With our complementary capabilities, we will be able to help more people benefit from customer service that is faster, richer and available whenever and however they need it—via phone, email, text, web chat or messaging. In particular, we look forward to enhancing the messaging experience, which is one of the fastest-growing ways for people and businesses to engage.” And Levy and Idema wrote in the Newsroom post, “As businesses adjust to an evolving digital environment, they’re seeking solutions that place people at the center, especially when it comes to communication. Any business knows that when the phone rings, they need to answer it. Increasingly, texts and messages have become just as important as that phone call—and businesses need to adapt. We’ve witnessed this shift firsthand as every day, more than 175 million people contact businesses via WhatsApp. This number is growing because messaging provides a better overall customer experience and drives sales for businesses.”

Customer Experience

Facebook Agrees to Acquire CRM Platform Kustomer

The team will join the social network, and the service will continue to operate

David Cohen

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David Cohen