Zendesk acquires Smooch, launches Slack and WhatsApp integrations

According to a blog post of Zendesk, Smooch is the fifth purchase of the company after Base, Zopim,Outbound.io, and Bime Analytics.
Zendesk Inc., a customer service software provider, has reportedly announced that it has acquired Smooch Technologies Holdings ULC for an undisclosed amount of money. Zendesk also unveiled Slack and WhatsApp integrations and new apps available through its Zendesk Marketplace at its annual showcase conference in New York.
According to a blog post of Zendesk, Smooch is the fifth purchase of the company after Base, Zopim,Outbound.io, and Bime Analytics. It will be helped with the technology of Smooch to drive "the next wave" of connected conversations on various messaging channels. To that end, a new solution team of Zendesk will support customers who intend to use products of Smooch for building bespoke conversational apps and webpages.
Mikkel Svane, Founder and CEO, Zendesk, reportedly stated that the world we are living in is messaging-centric, and customers expect convenience and interactivity of messaging to be part of their experiences. As long-time partners with Smooch, the company knows about the advancements of its collaborator in conversational experience to bring together all forms of messaging and develop continuous conversation between businesses and customers, he further added.
Smooch offers speech on popular voice assistants, like Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa, along with text on Line, WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM, Telegram, Viber, Kakao Talk, Rich Communication Services (RCS) and SMS. Zendesk reportedly noted that Smooch has the excellence of being one of the largest WhatsApp Business integration provider, which allows organizations to send and manage non-promotional automated messages to customers such as appointment reminders, event tickets, or shipping info, for a fixed rate.
Zendesk has also unveiled the general availability of Side Conversations for Slack, which will allow Zendesk users to work with other departments or partners outside their firm. Side Conversations specifically integrates with Zendesk Sell, the sales automation product of the company which streamlines processes and pipelines, and Zendesk Support, its ticket-based customer service software.
Source credit: https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/22/zendesk-acquires-conversational-platform-smooch-launches-new-whatsapp-and-slack-integrations/