Global social media management platform firm Hootsuite today announced it is acquiring Montreal-based artificial intelligence (AI) customer messaging platform company Heyday for CA$60 million.
A study by Edison Research found that 39 per cent of social media users expect a reply from companies within sixty minutes, yet the average response time is five hours. With this acquisition, combining automation and AI, brands will now be able to respond intelligently, with personalized responses at scale in real-time.
Heyday offers an enterprise-grade customer messaging platform that integrates with e-commerce platforms, enabling brands to engage in one-to-one messaging conversations with their customers. In the near term, Heyday will operate as a standalone division, however, the teams will work together to use Heyday’s AI capabilities across Hootsuite, offering customers an end-to-end solution to address the complete customer journey, Richard Hungerford, vice-president of corporate development and strategy, Hootsuite, told itbusiness.ca.
The entire Heyday team of approximately 80 people is now part of Hootsuite and will create a third Canadian office for Hootsuite in Montreal.
“Part of what attracted us to Heyday was their strong leadership team. With Heyday, we not only found a leading technology, we found a culture that felt wholly aligned with ours, full of passionate people proud of what they do, and committed to driving customer success on social. Over the coming months, our combined leadership teams will be assessing all integration opportunities as we bring our companies together,” elaborated Hungerford.
This acquisition, along with Hootsuite’s acquisition earlier this year of another customer engagement tool, Sparkcentral, which enables one-on-one messaging via social channels, provides brands with a choice of customer relationship management tools.
“Social is the new interface of commerce and customer care,” said Tom Keiser, chief executive officer of Hootsuite, in a press release. “Modern-day brands have to manage a multitude of daily interactions and conversations at scale—which is impossible to do without AI automation. With the acquisition of Heyday, Hootsuite will now give AI capabilities to marketing, sales, and support teams globally so they can deliver exceptional experiences at scale.”
–the story was updated with additional info.