Salesforce.com Acquires Social Customer Service Platform Assistly
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- Published in DemandGen Reports
Salesforce.com announced yesterday its acquisition of Assistly, an instant customer-service help desk built for the cloud.
Salesforce.com acquired Assistly for approximately $50 million in cash, net of cash acquired, according to a press release. Salesforce.com also assumed Assistly’s unvested options and will issue restricted stock units to certain Assistly shareholders.
Assistly was founded in 2009 by Alex Bard (CEO); Gary Benitt (COO); Brad Birnbaum (CTO); and Jeremy Suriel, (Chief Architect). Company investors include Bullpen Capital, Index Ventures, salesforce.com, Social Leverage and True Ventures.
Assistly’s built in social capabilities are designed to enable companies to deliver social customer-service. Assistly customers include Instagram, Klout, One Kings Lane, Spotify and Square. The platform is designed to enable companies to manage service cases and engage with customers in real time across a variety of social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, web chats, email and phone, from one interface.
“Salesforce has spent over a decade democratizing enterprise applications in the cloud,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “The Assistly acquisition doubles down on that strategy by putting us at the heart of the new trend of customer service help desk applications that have instant sign up and zero-touch onboarding, expanding the potential reach of the Service Cloud to millions of companies around the world.”
More than 17,000 companies use the Salesforce Service Cloud to connect with customers across both traditional and social channels; engage directly with their customers over Facebook, Twitter and other social communities; and leverage mobile capabilities like Apple’s FaceTime.