Facebook Buys CRM Platform Kustomer for '$1 billion'

In the US, Facebook has acquired customer relationship management platform Kustomer, which focuses on omnichannel enterprise customer service. The deal was valued at $1 billion according to a report in The Wall Street Journal which cited 'people familiar with the matter'.

Based in New York and Durham, NC, Kustomer had previously raised more than $174m in investment funding. The firm provides a platform bringing customer conversations from various channels together into a single-screen view to help contact centers and businesses with their customer service and support. This platform enables personalized customer and agent experiences by offering views of a customer's history, facilitating continuous omnichannel conversations, and using intelligence to automate repetitive tasks. In addition, the firm's Kustomer IQ artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities helps contextualize conversations, generate predictive insights, and recommend next best actions throughout the service journey.

Facebook says it plans to support Kustomer's operations by providing the resources it needs to scale its business. Kustomer businesses will continue to own the data that comes from interactions with their customers, and Facebook eventually expects to host Kustomer data on its own secure infrastructure. 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.

In a statement, Facebook said: 'We're excited about what the future holds with Kustomer, and we hope to welcome co-founders Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel and the rest of the Kustomer team to Facebook soon'.

Web site: www.kustomer.com .