Social CRM company Assistly announced this week that it is being acquired by Salesforce.com. The move is Salesforce’s latest effort to expand its popular cloud CRM platform. Salesforce paid approximately $50 million (plus a reported potential $30 million earn-out) for Assistly, the barely two-year old provider of SaaS customer service help desk capabilities.
This is not Salesforce’s first foray into social CRM. The company has already acquired a handful of social software companies recently and is not afraid to pay top dollar. Earlier this year it picked up social media monitoring startup Radian6 for $326 million and 9.3x revenue, while in 2010 it acquired social sales contact manager Jigsaw for $156 million and 8.7x revenue. These are significant valuations considering the 4.2x median revenue multiple for social CRM transactions tracked by Signal Hill over the past year.
Assistly has raised approximately $5.2 million from venture firms including Bullpen Capital, Index Ventures, Social Leverage and True Ventures. The company’s real-time help desk platform targets small and emerging companies looking to reach customers through social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Web chats. The technology will be integrated into Salesforce’s Service Cloud and its ease of implementation and low-cost — customers can pay per use or pay a small monthly fee — are expected to help Salesforce reach its next big target: SMBs.
As social networks continue to infiltrate every aspect of the internet and increasingly, the enterprise, businesses need more options to keep up with customer interactions beyond the traditional channels. With more than 20 M&A transactions announced since the beginning of the year in the SaaS CRM space totaling more than a half-billion in enterprise value , continued activity in the space is highly likely.
