To kick off 2021 Vancouver tech anchor Hootsuite announced the acquisition of Sparkcentral, a messaging app-focused customer engagement platform that offers virtual agents and automated message distribution.
Eight months later, they’re at it again.
Hootsuite has acquired Montreal’s Heyday, a conversational AI platform that enables brands to deliver personalized customer experiences through 1:1 messaging conversations.
Heyday offers an enterprise-grade customer messaging platform that integrates seamlessly with e-commerce platforms and works with leading brands such as Lacoste, Decathlon, Cirque du Soleil, and to deliver more personalized and rewarding customer experiences via chat and video.
Commerce is rapidly moving onto social and messaging platforms and Hootsuite CEO Tom Keiser feels this acquisition will now allow brands to fully leverage conversational AI to create a better customer experience.
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“Social is the new interface of commerce and customer care. Modern day brands have to manage a multitude of daily interactions and conversations at scale—which is impossible to do without AI automation,” said Keiser regarding the news.
“With the acquisition of Heyday, Hootsuite will now give AI capabilities to marketing, sales and support teams globally so they can deliver exceptional experiences at scale.”
A recent study found that 39% of social media users expect a reply from companies within sixty minutes, yet the average response time is five hours. Through Hootsuite’s combination of automation and AI, brands can now, for the first time, respond intelligently, with personalized responses at scale in real-time.
“We created Heyday’s conversational platform to make buying from a brand as easy as messaging a friend,” said Steve Desjarlais, Co-Founder, Heyday. “Together with Hootsuite, we will bridge the gap between physical and digital brand experiences by leveraging social and messaging channels as the anchor and golden thread of the customer journey.”
Heyday was founded in 2017 by David Bordeleau, Hugues Rousseau, Steve Desjarlais, and Étienne Mérineauand and raised a $6.5 million seed round in early 2021.
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