Zoom to Acquire Five9 intelligent cloud service for $14.7bn

Zoom is to Acquire Five9 intelligent cloud service for $14.7bn to 'reimagine the way [organisations] engage with their customers'.

Five9 is a so-called intelligent cloud contact centre offering Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS). It represents further diversification of the video calling service after the recent acquisition of Kites AI.

The buyout suggests Zoom sees a continuation of its pandemic-led success by infiltrating a new normal where customer service operations can be conducted via video calling.

Zoom expects the transaction to add $24 billion to the contact centre market using Five9, which prides itself on being "highly scalable and secure".

'Robust and reliable'

Eric Yuan, CEO, Zoom, said: “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. 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.”

'Meaningful fix'

Rowan Trollope, CEO of Five9, said: “Businesses spend significant resources annually on their contact centres, but still struggle to deliver a seamless experience for their customers. 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 realize more value and deliver real results for their business. 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 Phone

Zoom’s acquisition of Five9 is complementary to the growing popularity of its Zoom Phone offering. Zoom Phone is a modern, cloud phone system that offers a digital alternative to legacy phone offerings, enabling organizations to connect and interact in new and convenient ways to keep businesses moving.