This Acquisition Aims to Integrate Marketing Bots With Real People
In a move aimed at tapping the market growth of “conversational commerce,” Conversocial has acquired AI-powered platform Assist.
The company said the deal to acquire the conversational commerce platform will allow “brands to transform sales, marketing, and customer service with dynamic customer interactions that seamlessly integrate bots and live agents.”
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Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the company said as part of the acquisition, Shane Mac, Assist’s chief executive officer, will take on the role of Conversocial’s chief automation officer. Mac launched Assist with Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens. “Conversocial will retain all of Assist’s current staff and will immediately begin hiring for additional positions,” the company added.
“Assist’s focus on smart, next-generation automation and chatbots coupled with Conversocial’s unified approach to new service channels sets a new industry standard for creating meaningful customer interactions that drive value,” the companies said in a joint statement.
The timing of the acquisition aligns with growth in message marketing. Citing its own research, Conversocial said 62 percent of consumers “say they are more likely to be repeat customers to brands they can connect with through digital means.”
Joshua March, ceo of Conversocial, said its clients “have seen the volume of conversations taking place over messaging channels grow by more than 900 percent in the past few years.”
“For brands to continue delivering a great experience to consumers at that kind of scale, automation is required,” the ceo said. “With Assist, we are now able to combine the best aspects of messaging automation and human interaction to make connecting with a business as easy as messaging a friend.”
Mac said the future “isn’t about downloading another app. We are moving into a world where you can do everything with a brand with simply a conversation. A conversation that remembers your preferences, learns over time and creates the best customer experience: a conversational customer experience. We now have the resources and an end-to-end solution to own the customer experience from marketing and sales all the way to service.”
Collectively, clients of Conversocial and Assist include Audi, Sephora, Google, Tostitos and Aer Lingus, among others.
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