Five9 Acquisition Turns Zoom into a Full Business Communications Company: The 2021 CRM Conversation Starters
Zoom Video Communications last year became the de facto platform for businesses’ internal and external communications amid COVID-19 lockdowns, when in-person meetings were not possible. But like Facebook, the San Jose, Calif., company couldn’t really be considered a CRM company. That changed with its recent acquisition of Five9, a provider of cloud contact center systems, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $14.7 billion.
The deal, which was inked in late July, will result in the combination of Five9’s contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) solution with Zoom’s broad communications platform, which industry insiders expect will transform how businesses connect with their customers, building the customer engagement platform of the future.
“Zoom is built on a core belief that robust and reliable communications technology enables interactions that build greater empathy and trust, and we believe that holds particularly true for customer engagement,” said Eric Yuan, CEO and founder of Zoom, in a statement. “Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact center, and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers.”
Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting, lauds Zoom’s acquisition. “It’s a good idea for them to enter the CCaaS market,” Fluss says. The deal, she adds, shows that Zoom “is turning more and more into a full business communications provider. And this is a reflection that this is turning into an omnichannel world.”
“Zoom appears to be making a general move toward integrating communications systems for internal and external use,” says independent CRM industry analyst and consultant Marshall Lager.
“With this acquisition, Zoom will empower businesses to use the power of cloud communications and AI to build deep connections with consumers via their contact centers,” says Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca, a provider of conversation intelligence for revenue teams.
Zoom was also busy on the integration front in the past 12 months, linking its products with key CRM technologies, including the following:
• Chorus.ai, bringing conversational intelligence to Zoom Meetings;
• Certain, to help businesses unlock and integrate data from events;
• Act-On, to facilitate webinar marketing;
• Medallia, to facilitate customer research;
• SugarCRM, so users can schedule, launch, and track Zoom meetings within the Sugar platform;
• 3CLogic, to allow contact centers to sync agent availability and accept incoming calls from within Zoom;
• Zendesk, to increase agent efficiency and improve customer relationships with face-to-face conversations directly inside Zoom meetings;
• Talkdesk, bringing together unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) and CCaaS platforms, Zoom Phone capabilities, and real-time collaboration;
• ServiceNow, to help scale customer service; and
• The Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX), to help sales, marketing, and customer service teams incorporate video into existing processes and workflows.
“Zoom is increasingly a part of our everyday professional and personal lives, and we are proud to work with the Zoom team to help our customers innovate with video and seamlessly incorporate it with their existing sales, marketing, and customer service applications,” said Rob Tarkoff, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Cloud CX and Data Cloud, in a statement. “Now more than ever, video has become a critical channel for brands to engage customers. This is not a nice-to-have; it is now table stakes, and, when fully integrated, video is an incredible tool for brands to deliver memorable experiences.”