Facebook Agrees to Acquire Kustomer

Facebook: We want to become a platform for social kommerce. Who can help?
Kustomer: *enters the chat*

Facebook has agreed to acquire customer relationship management startup Kustomer at a valuation just north of $1 billion, the WSJ reports. Kustomer’s core competency = centralizing customer interactions across channels.

• Kustomer’s “omnichannel” approach means customers and agents can toggle correspondence between platforms. They can slide from Instagram DM to web chat to SMS without the convo dropping off.
• Kustomer’s software augments the capacity of human agents by determining the nature of inbound requests and offloading simple conversational tasks to chatbots.

Why is FB interested? Over 175 million users contact businesses via WhatsApp every day. Others use Instagram or Messenger to do the same thing. As FB makes a serious push into social commerce, brands need tools to manage comms with customers. Kustomer represents a light-touch, automated step in that direction.

+ While we’re here: Retail Brew and Emerging Tech Brew recently covered the technologies powering e-commerce. And we mentioned Kustomer. 👀