Zendesk Acquires Smooch, Enhances CRM Platform

CRM provider Zendesk, Inc. has acquired Smooch, a CRM platform that it says helps brands personalize their messaging across channels, Zendesk announced on Wednesday. Terms were not disclosed.

In addition, Zendesk has announced an expansion of its Zendesk Sunshine CRM platform, new integrations with Narvar, and Domo and partnerships with ClearScale and other firms.

The goal is to help companies gain “a deeper and more holistic view of their customers,” states Adrian McDermott, president of products, Zendesk, adding that the new partnerships "enable companies to build and deploy apps faster."

According to Zendesk, Sunshine allows firms to connect customer data wherever it lives. The platform is built for developers on open standards who utilize Amazon Web Services (AWS).

ClearScale CEO Pavel Pragin, an AWS partner, says the arrangement will give Zendesk customers “endless integration possibilities.”

Additional partners include Qualtrics, Atlassian Opsgenie, Vidyard, PagerDuty, Zaius, Moltin, Particular, CloudSet, Envoy, and Magento (an Adobe company).

These firms will join existing partners such as Pendo, Segment, Stella Connect, and Oomnitza, which currently build on Sunshine.

Mike Myer, CEO of Quiq, a competitor to both Zendesk, ClearScale and Smooch, observes: “Messaging is quickly becoming the way consumers engage with brands because of the convenience of interacting on their own terms.”

Myer adds: “We are seeing marketers become bullish about taking advantage of this new channel. This is, in part, being driven by messaging platforms opening themselves up to businesses to present richer experiences.”

 

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