Salesforce.com Targets SMBs with Assistly Acquisition
Looking to extend the reach of its customer support and service platform, Salesforce.com last week said it has acquired Assistly for $50 million.
The company said it will integrate Assistly, a provider of online customer service help-desk apps for small and medium businesses that run in the cloud, into the Salesforce.com Service Cloud offering. Assistly is targeted at SMBs and startups with its $49 per month, per user subscription fee.
Founded in 2009, Assistly pulls customer interactions from a variety of channels and social media including Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and phone into a common user interface, enabling customer service agents to engage in real time with customers.
The move is in line with Salesforce.com's push to bring social networking to enterprises using its platforms. At last month's annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, CEO Marc Benioff focused on what he calls the emergence of "the social enterprise."
"Service Cloud will now enable even the smallest companies to become a social enterprise," said Alex Dayon, Salesforce.com's executive VP of applications, in a statement.
Of its 104,000 customers, Salesforce.com said 17,000 use Service Desk. The company said the acquisition of Assistly will help it extend its reach to SMBs by providing a lower barrier to entry and providing the option of migrating to other Service Cloud services over time.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 09/27/2011 at 1:14 PM