Facebook Inc acquires customer service platform Kustomer in a deal that would value about $1 billion. Facebook Inc said on Monday it would buy customer service startup Kustomer, as the world’s largest social network forays further into e-commerce.
Kustomer is based in New York and was founded in 2015. Kustomer is an omnichannel CRM platform that brings customer conversations from various channels together into a single-screen view. It allows businesses to aggregate customer conversations from various channels into a single screen, and also to automate some of the responses to buyers. The firm already offers its services on Facebook Messenger and Instagram.
By bringing Kustomer into the fold, Facebook will provide small businesses that use its service to advertise and sell goods more features to close sales through the social network’s services. This should seemingly lead these businesses to spend more on Facebook advertisements. That’s key for the company, which makes nearly 99% of its revenue from advertising.
“Facebook eventually expects to host Kustomer data on secure Facebook infrastructure,” said Dan Levy, VP of Ads and Business Products.
In doing so, Facebook will act as a service provider at the instruction of business customers.
While Facebook will not automatically use Kustomer data to inform the ads that a user sees, businesses will have the option to use their data at Kustomer for their marketing purposes, which may include separate advertising services on Facebook.