Facebook has acquired Kustomer, the customer service messaging and management platform for a whooping sum of $1b.
“We look forward to working closely with Facebook, where we will continue to serve our customers and work with our partners as part of the Facebook family,“ said Brad Birnbaum, CEO and Cofounder of Kustomer.
“With our complementary capabilities, we will be able to help more people benefit from customer service that is faster, richer, and available whenever and however they need it–via phone, email, text, web chat, or messaging.
“In particular, we look forward to enhancing the messaging experience which is one of the fastest-growing ways for people and businesses to engage.”
The company was founded by Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel in 2015. Kustomer raised a total of $173.5M in funding, with its last funding coming in December of last year.
Investors in the company include Plug and Play, Battery Ventures, Canaan Partners, Redpoint, Tiger Global Management, BoxGroup, Coatue, Cisco Investments, Boldstart Ventures, Social Leverage, Alex Bard, George Hu, and Jeffrey Leventhal.
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The acquisition of a business-software company such as Kustomer is unusual for Facebook. In the past, Facebook has primarily bought consumer-centric companies, such as gif catalog company Giphy in May and Spanish cloud video gaming company PlayGiga in December 2019.
These acquisitions usually serve as the foundation for building features for Facebook users.
By acquiring Kustomer ,Facebook will be providing small businesses that use its service to advertise and sell goods more features to close sales through the social network’s services.
Facebook isn’t the only social media company making acquisitions to improve its customer service features. Earlier this month, Snap bought Voca.ai, a startup creating AI-based voice agents for call centers.
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