Zendesk Unveils Next Generation of Conversational Messaging Experiences

Company acquires Smooch to expand Zendesk’s omnichannel leadership;
launches new WhatsApp and Slack integrations

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE: ZEN) today announced it acquired Smooch
Technologies Holdings ULC, the Montreal-based company behind Smooch, a
platform connecting businesses with customers to power more personalized
and human conversations. The acquisition marks Zendesk’s next step in
delivering the best omnichannel experiences by connecting conversations
between businesses and customers on any messaging channel–from websites
and mobile apps to the world’s leading messaging apps like WhatsApp and
Facebook Messenger.

“We live in a messaging-centric world, and customers expect the
convenience and interactivity of messaging to be part of their
experiences,” said Mikkel Svane, Zendesk founder, CEO and chairman. “As
long-time partners with Smooch, we know first hand how much they have
advanced the conversational experience to bring together all forms of
messaging and create a continuous conversation between customers and
businesses.”

More than 75 percent* of all smartphone users now use messaging apps
such as WhatsApp. Smooch is one of the largest providers of WhatsApp
Business integration, and through Zendesk’s early access program,
companies can now reach WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion users to manage service
interactions and engage with customers directly through Zendesk Chat.
This marks the continued expansion of Zendesk’s integration with the
WhatsApp Business API into The Zendesk Suite.

Create a consistent conversational experience

Businesses struggle to manage the rapidly increasing number of customer
inquiries across a variety of disparate channels. Smooch is the only
messaging solution pulling in all customer conversations across web,
mobile, and social messaging into a cohesive interface no matter what
the channel is. As an API and SDK-based development platform built on
AWS, this acquisition furthers Zendesk’s commitment to an open, flexible
CRM that businesses can harness to build and offer differentiated
customer experiences.

“With their launch of Sunshine last year, Zendesk took the bold and
disruptive step required to compete for and win the future of CRM,” said
Warren Levitan, co-founder and CEO of Smooch “The decision to combine
forces with Zendesk and help further their CRM strategy will allow us to
supercharge our existing mission for building the best customer
experiences. We are thrilled to be joining the entire Zendesk team, so
many of whom we have had the pleasure to work with over the past
three-and-a-half years.”

Together, Zendesk and Smooch will drive the next wave of connected
conversations on a variety of messaging channels, including WhatsApp,
Facebook Messenger, LINE, WeChat, Telegram, Twitter DM, Viber, Kakao
Talk, SMS text, RCS and through native web iOS and Android apps. For
example, with these expanded capabilities, an online retailer could
seamlessly manage an issue with an incorrect shipment or return that
starts on social messaging like WhatsApp and shifts to its own native
messaging experience in one continuous, informed thread within Zendesk.

In addition to product enhancements, Zendesk announced a Conversation
Solutions Team, which will support businesses seeking to leverage
Smooch’s best-in-class conversation platform to craft personalized
messaging experiences. This team can deliver customized messaging
applications such as a global hotel brand that provides customers with a
premium, omnichannel guest experience through the ability to message
hotel staff on property in real-time for any needs across a range of
messaging platforms.

Empower a collaborative, cross-functional team

Businesses know that the need to connect and collaborate in real-time is
critical, and Slack is the preferred communications channel for
business. To provide the best experience and service, customer-facing
employees need the ability to pull in subject matter experts quickly and
easily. Zendesk today announced the general availability of Side
Conversations for Slack. Side Conversations empowers teams to work
seamlessly together with other departments or partners outside the
company without leaving Zendesk. This is especially critical for sales
and support who frequently work together to solve and prioritize
customer issues. With Zendesk Sell and Support integration, service and
sales teams can quickly partner to develop joint solutions with full
customer context.

Suite expansion with new integrations

To make great customer experience accessible to everyone, Zendesk
launched The Suite in 2018, and it quickly became the company’s most
successful product launch ever, driving a 400 percent increase in our
customers adopting omnichannel solutions. A core part of The Suite’s
success is its robust and growing Zendesk
Marketplace, which is expanding with the addition of new Suite Ready
partners including Atlassian Statuspage, Lessonly, Maestro, Stella,
Tymeshift, Geckoboard, and Ada. These integrations help businesses
improve their customer experience (CX) operations in a variety of ways,
including training and managing their workforce, tracking KPIs and
goals, and monitoring their tickets for quality assurance.

The Smooch acquisition, WhatsApp and Slack integrations, and The Suite
expansion were all unveiled at the one-day customer experience event, Zendesk
Showcase, taking place in New York today.

Smooch’s messaging solutions will continue to be supported for all
current customers and available directly to new customers. To find out
more about our Conversation Solutions Team or to sign up for the
WhatsApp EAP with Zendesk Chat, please visit www.zendesk.com/message.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

*eMarketer: Messaging
App Usage Worldwide: eMarketer’s Updated Forecast, Leaderboard and
Behavioral Analysis

About Zendesk

The best customer experiences are built with Zendesk. Our customer
service and engagement products are powerful and flexible, and scale to
meet the needs of any business. Zendesk serves businesses across
hundreds of industries, with more than 145,000 paid customer accounts
offering service and support in over 30 languages. Zendesk is
headquartered in San Francisco, and operates worldwide with 17 offices
in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. Learn more
at www.zendesk.com.

Contacts

Courtney Blake
(816) 520-5503
press@zendesk.com