Zendesk has acquired Zopim Technologies Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based provider of live chat software, to expand the chat capabilities of its customer service platform. Financial terms were not disclosed. Separately, Zendesk has filed a $150 million IPO.
“Real-time chat has become the foundation for how customers want to communicate online today. It is convenient for customers and makes companies more approachable to more people,” said Mikkel Svane, founder and CEO of Zendesk, in a statement. “Zopim has a proven track record of providing tools for proactive engagement. Most importantly, the Zopim team shares our belief in building products that are beautifully simple and easy for any company to use.”
Zopim will ultimately be bundled in all Zendesk customer service platform trials as part of the integration, and existing Zendesk customers will have new options for adding Zopim to their accounts. Zendesk also said that it plans to include a Zopim Lite plan when the new integration is launched in May.
“We acquired Zopim to accelerate our chat functionality and to bring our users a beautifully simple product they can use to engage their customers in real-time,” wrote Adrian McDermott, senior vice president of product development, Zendesk, in a blog post. “Zopim has a great track record of providing tools for proactive customer experiences to customers worldwide. They offer both free and paid plans for customers, and have focused on making their product intuitive, transparent, and fun.”
The companies said that Zopim will continue to be sold as a standalone live chat tool and in the future its customers will gain more options for buying and using Zendesk’s full customer service platform.
“Customers using Zendesk chat will be able to continue to do so,” McDermott wrote. “However, we believe that Zopim is a far superior product. It has a customizable widget and extensive feature set that we don’t have, so our future development efforts will be re-focused to Zopim.”
Zopim, founded in 2008 in Singapore, offers both free and paid live chat plans. Web sites use its widget to offer chat in more than 150 countries around the world.