Zoom Video Communications has reached an agreement to acquire Five9, a provider of a cloud contact centre, in an all-stock transaction valued at $14.7 billion (£10.7bn). 

Combining Five9’s Contact Centre as a Service (“CCaaS”) solution with Zoom’s broad communications platform is hoped to transform how businesses connect with their customers, building the customer engagement platform of the future.

The acquisition is expected to help enhance Zoom’s presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth opportunity by adding the £17.5bn contact centre market. Five9 is a pioneer of cloud-based contact centre software. Its scalable and secure cloud contact centre delivers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-use applications that allows management and optimization of customer interactions across many different channels, according to Zoom CEO and founder, Eric Yuan.

He 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.”

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’s 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’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 organisations to connect and interact in new and convenient ways to keep businesses moving.

The combination also offers both companies significant cross-selling opportunities to each other’s respective customer bases. As a result of the acquisition, Zoom will play an even greater role in driving the digital future and bringing companies and their customers closer together.

Following the close of the transaction, Five9 will be an operating unit of Zoom and Rowan Trollope will become a president of Zoom and continue as CEO of Five9, reporting to Eric Yuan.

Want to learn more about topics like this from senior executives in this space? Learn more at the Cloud in FinTech & Banking Summit, on October 13 2021, on how financial organisations are using cloud migration for competitive advantage.

Tags: Five9, Zoom