Hootsuite Acquires Sparkcentral
Social media management platform provider Hootsuite has acquiredSparkcentral, a providerof digital customer engagement solutions through conversational messaging channels like Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, WeChat, SMS, and chat. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Sparkcentral offers a social and digital customer care platform, with deep integrations into core business systems.The core of Sparkcentral is an automated message distribution platform, complete with virtual agent functionality for customer care workflows and channel alignment and communication orchestration between marketing, customer service departments, and their stakeholders.
"Our world is digital. Social and messaging platforms have increasingly become where people are looking to engage with brands and organizations," said Tom Keiser, CEO of Hootsuite, in a statement. "Our customers have been asking for more capabilities in the area of social customer care, and we're excited to expand our offering with this new acquisition.
"Brands and organizations must grow their digital capabilities to connect with their customers on the social and messaging platforms their customers use, not the other way around. These customer engagements need to seamlessly connect into the brand's and organization's workflow across all customer-facing departments—marketing, sales, customer support, finance, etc.," Keiser said. "With Sparkcentral joining Hootsuite, we enable brands of all sizes to create a holistic, agile, and effective experience for their customers."
"We have built a robust social customer care platform to enable some of the world's leading brands with scalable [service-level agreement]-based engagement throughout every step of the customer journey, from the marketing and sales phase to the post-sales phase," Christoph Neut, former CEO of Sparkcentral who joins Hootsuite as vice president of sales, said in a statement. "Together our two best-in-breed technologies will be a disruptive force as we support organizations of all sizes in providing their customers with the highest level of customer care at scale."