Facebook acquires CRM start-up Kustomer

Facebook has reached an agreement to acquire Kustomer, a top-rated CRM that enables businesses to effectively manage all customer interactions across channels. Facebook said in a blog post, "Our goal with Kustomer is simple: to give businesses access to best-in-class tools that deliver excellent service and support."

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.

Facebook 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. To that end, Facebook recently announced several API updates for WhatsApp and Messenger, allowing for further integration into the partners’ tools and faster onboarding to help businesses manage their communications with customers.

That’s where Kustomer comes in.

Kustomer is an omnichannel CRM platform that brings customer conversations from various channels together into a single-screen view. It helps businesses automate repetitive tasks so their agents can maximize the time and quality of interactions with customers. Facebook plans to support Kustomer’s operations by providing the resources it needs to scale its business, improve and innovate its product offering, and delight its customers. That way, more people will benefit from customer service that is faster, richer and available whenever and however they need it, whether it’s phone, email, web chat or messaging.

Kustomer is one of many solutions in this arena, and Facebook will continue to support the numerous options that businesses have to integrate their CRM platform of choice with their messaging services. Facebook wants businesses of all sizes and across all industries to discover the value of messaging — and having a vibrant partner ecosystem is critical in providing their customers with choices.

Facebook added in a blogpost, "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."

Kustomer businesses will continue to own the data that comes from interactions with their customers. Facebook eventually expects to host Kustomer data on secure Facebook infrastructure. In doing so, Facebook will act as a service provider at the instruction of business customers. This is an industry standard practice among many companies that offer service solutions. 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.