July 20, 2021

Zoom announced plans to buy cloud call center service Five9 in a $14.7 billion exchange yesterday.

The purchase of Five9 will give Zoom more presence in the company and a path into the $24 billion contact center market – a market already populated by other major players such as Cisco, Avaya, NICE, Genesys, AWS and Twilio, all of which are in some way rivals.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said Five9 was a natural fit that would help make it a broader customer engagement and communication platform.

Rowan Trollope, CEO of Five9, said his company is striving to further humanize customer service, and the combination with Zoom will allow the company to improve its mission and scale globally.

What the companies hope to do is develop an integrated communication and collaboration stack. Think suite meets the best of the breed.

CFO Kelly Steckelberg said the contact center is the gateway to customer loyalty, and that Zoom with Five9 should be an omnichannel platform.

Zoom CEO Yuan said that choosing Five9 to build a contact center platform made sense because the cultures were aligned and the two companies were able to close large deals together in the past.

Yuan added that Zoom’s approach to the contact center would remain neutral even with Five9, with the customer’s perspective continuing to be the top priority.

For more informatin, read the original story in ZDNet.