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Unified communications vendor RingCentral is to buy cloud-based contact center provider Connect First to boost its customer engagement portfolio.
The planned acquisition will give RingCentral access to the US-based company’s cloud-based outbound customer engagement platform.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed and the deal is expected to close by the end of March.
Following the acquisition, the RingCentral customer engagement portfolio will include its own contact centre for inbound communications, while its engage platform will service for digital customers. Connect First’s technology will meanwhile service outbound and blended customer interactions.
Founded in 2005 and based in Colorado, Connect First operates its platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its technology runs on open APIs.
The company currently works with firms such as ASPCA, Carnival Cruise Line, Party City, PBS, United Way, and Business Process Outsourcers (BPOs), which deploy the technology to service providers such as Charter Cable, Comcast, and SiriusXM.
According to RingCentral, Contact First has 'no material deployments' in Asia Pacific and Europe.
“Maximising agent productivity in today’s rapidly changing customer service environment is becoming increasingly challenging,” said Jim Dvorkin, SVP of customer engagement at RingCentral.
“The acquisition of Connect First complements our current customer engagement portfolio and will provide transformative and differentiated customer experiences.”
Founded in the US, RingCentral expanded into the Asia Pacific market through the opening of an Australian office in May 2018, where Ben Swanson was appointment to lead regional channel sales for APAC.
“At Connect First, we’ve been focused on building an innovative outbound/blended customer engagement platform with state-of-the-art architecture,” added Connect First founder and CEO Geoff Mina. "This acquisition validates our technology leadership, and we’re confident that by joining forces with RingCentral we will broaden our market reach and scale to deploy our platform to enterprises worldwide.”
Last month, the company hired Cisco channel veteran Peter Hughes as its regional sales vice president for APAC.
