Rowan Trollope (Five9)
Zoom is making a play for the contact centre market with a US$14.7 billion acquisition of US-based cloud contact centre provider Five9.
The global video conferencing platform provider, which already has a unified communications partnership with Five9, will pay all-cash for the 18-year-old company, pending its approval by Five9 shareholders.
Expected to close in the first half of the calendar year 2022, the deal will give Zoom access to the “US$24 billion” global contact centre market.
Founded in 2001 and boasting a Southeast Asian headquarters in the Philippines, Five9 is described by Zoom as a pioneer of cloud-based contact centre software that provides applications for customer management across multiple channels.
“We are continuously looking for ways to enhance our platform, and the addition of Five9 is a natural fit that will deliver even more happiness and value to our customers,” said Eric S. Yuan, Zoom founder and CEO. “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.
"Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact centre and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers. We are thrilled to join forces with the Five9 team, and I look forward to welcoming them to the Zoom family," he added.
Following the close of the transaction, Five9 will become an operating unit of Zoom and Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope will be made a president of Zoom and continue as CEO of Five9, reporting to Yuan.
“It has always been Five9’s mission to make it easy for businesses to fix that problem and engage with their customers in a more meaningful and efficient way. Joining forces with Zoom will provide Five9’s business customers access to best-of-breed solutions, particularly Zoom Phone, that will enable them to realise more value and deliver real results for their business,” Trollope said.
“This, combined with Zoom’s ‘ease-of use’ philosophy and broad communication portfolio, will truly enable customers to engage via their preferred channel of choice.”
Zoom added that the deal would enable a number of cross-selling opportunities to each other’s respective customer bases.
The deal comes less than a month after Zoom announced it would acquire German start-up Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions – known as Kites – in a bid to imbue its offering with real-time language translation capabilities.
