Vancouver-headquartered Hootsuite has acquired Sparkcentral, a customer service SaaS platform that enables 1:1 conversational messaging through Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, WeChat, SMS, and Chat.
The acquisition is Hootsuite’s thirteenth since being founded in 2008 and is its first since 2017.
Based in Belgium and with an office in New York, Sparkcentral is a social and digital customer care platform, with deep integrations into the core business systems of today’s customer-centric organizations including Air Canada and Slack.
“Our world is digital—social and messaging platforms have increasingly become where people are looking to engage with brands and organizations,” said Hootsuite CEO Tom Keiser regarding the acquisition. “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.”
The core of Sparkcentral is an automated message distribution platform, complete with virtual agent functionality for a highly efficient customer care workflow—enhancing channel alignment and communication orchestration between marketing, customer service departments, and their stakeholders.
“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 and organization’s workflow across all customer-facing departments—marketing, sales, customer support, finance, etc.,” said Keiser. “With Sparkcentral joining Hootsuite, we enable brands of all sizes to create a holistic, agile, and effective experience for their customers.”
According to LinkedIn, Sparkcentral currently has 33 employees, the majority of which reside in Belgium. Sparkcentral has raised USD $37.6 million in funding since its founding in 2011, according to Crunchbase data.
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