RingCentral Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Connect First to Expand its Customer Engagement Portfolio
14 Jan, 2019
Acquisition adds outbound/blended capabilities for comprehensive customer engagement
BELMONT, Calif.--
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RingCentral, Inc., (NYSE:RNG), a leading provider of enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire
Connect First, a cloud-based outbound/blended customer engagement platform for midsize and enterprise companies. Connect First’s platform is deployed by customers such as the ASPCA, Carnival Cruise Line, Party City, PBS, United Way, and Business Process Outsourcers (BPOs) for large service providers such as Charter Cable, Comcast, and SiriusXM. With the Connect First acquisition, the RingCentral Customer Engagement portfolio will include
RingCentral Contact Center™ for inbound communications and Workforce Optimization (WFO),
RingCentral Engage™ for digital customer engagement, and
Connect First for outbound/blended customer interactions. “Maximizing agent productivity in today’s rapidly changing customer service environment is becoming increasingly challenging. Customer service organizations need to seamlessly blend outbound calling activity with customer call backs and communications over digital channels,” said Jim Dvorkin, senior vice president, Customer Engagement, RingCentral. “The acquisition of Connect First complements our current Customer Engagement portfolio and will provide transformative and differentiated customer experiences. We’re excited to welcome the Connect First team to RingCentral.” The Connect First cloud native platform is built from the ground up on a microservices architecture that is highly scalable and reliable, and runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). All of Connect First’s capabilities are available through web-based APIs that enable rapid innovation and easy integration. “At Connect First, we’ve been focused on building an innovative outbound/blended customer engagement platform with a state-of-the-art architecture,” said Geoff Mina, founder and CEO, Connect First. “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.” The Connect First platform provides key features that improve the outbound/blended customer experience and responsiveness of agents. These include:
Outbound/blended
Preview, progressive, and predictive outbound modes to maximize the effectiveness of agents
Telephony Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) tools to manage compliance rules and regulations
Dynamic Agent Scripting to guide agent interactions with customers
Call blending for managing outbound and inbound interactions to deliver optimal agent productivity
WebRTC-based agent desktop for flexibility and ease of management
Real-time and historical reporting and analytics for managers and supervisors
Open APIs for easy integration with third-party applications
Cloud native architecture
Microservices architecture running on AWS
Fully redundant platform for high availability
Proven deployments of multiple thousands of agents per customer