As Facebook shifts more toward e-commerce to support smaller businesses, the social media giant announced Monday that it will be purchasing Kustomer, an NYC-based startup that specializes in consolidating businesses’ customer service data so they can better support their customers.
While the exact terms of the deal have not been officially disclosed, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that Kustomer is valued at $1 billion. If the price is indeed $1 billion, this would be one of Facebook’s largest acquisitions to date.
Today, about 175 million people use Facebook to communicate with the businesses that have a page on the platform, using Facebook-owned messaging apps like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp to do so. However, these disparate forms of communication can be hard to keep track of, and the potentially valuable data gathered from these conversations is often lost.
That is where Kustomer comes in. Its omni-channel CRM platform pulls together customer conversations from various channels into one place, helping businesses improve interactions with their customers and work more effectively.
This acquisition seems to be in keeping with Facebook’s much larger shift toward what it calls “social commerce.” In the last couple of months, the company has also made several changes to its WhatsApp and Messenger tools, as well as the Instagram platform, making it easier for the businesses to let customers shop their products on Facebook. This deal with Kustomer means businesses that use Facebook as their primary online presence or simply just have a Facebook Page will have this tool at their disposal.
“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,” Dan Levy, Facebook’s VP of ads and business products, and Matt Idema, WhatsApp’s COO, said in a joint statement. “We want businesses of all sizes and across all industries to discover the value of messaging — and having a vibrant partner ecosystem is critical in providing our customers with choices.”
