BELMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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
“As RingCentral continues to be chosen by larger businesses, the need to support outbound customer interactions and campaign management has increased,” said Sheila McGee-Smith, President of McGee-Smith Analytics. “With its born-in-the-cloud microservices architecture, Connect First brings technology that has already been successfully deployed across midsize and enterprise organizations and will complement RingCentral’s existing portfolio.”
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1, 2019, and is estimated to have no material financial impact for the year ending December 31, 2019.
About RingCentral
RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG) is a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions. More flexible and cost-effective than legacy on-premises systems, RingCentral empowers modern mobile and distributed workforces to communicate, collaborate, and connect from any location, on any device, and via any mode. RingCentral provides unified voice, video, team messaging and collaboration, conferencing, online meetings, digital customer engagement, and integrated contact center solutions for enterprises globally. RingCentral’s open platform integrates with leading business apps and enables customers to easily customize business workflows. RingCentral is headquartered in Belmont, California, and has offices around the world.
©2019 RingCentral, Inc. All rights reserved. RingCentral, RingCentral Contact Center, RingCentral Engage, and the RingCentral logo are trademarks of RingCentral, Inc.
Forward-looking statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements,” including but not limited to, statements relating to the timing of the acquisition’s closing, the expected benefits of the acquisition, and the impact on our future financial results. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on assumptions that may prove to be incorrect, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward-looking statements. More detailed information about these factors may be found in the filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our most recent Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2018. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to RingCentral as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
