Salesforce Expands Customer Service Offerings With Assistly Acquisition

Salesforce spent approximately $50 million in cash, net of cash acquired, to buy Assistly, Salesforce said Wednesday.

Assistly offers cloud-based "instant customer service help desk applications" that small companies and startups use to quickly set up and deliver customer service through social networks. They can engage with customers in real time through multiple channels including Facebook, Twitter, Web chats, e-mail and phone.

Saying that Salesforce has been "democratizing enterprise applications in the cloud" since its founding, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement: "The Assistly acquisition doubles down on that strategy by putting us at the heart of the new trend of customer service help desk applications that have instant sign up and zero-touch onboarding, expanding the potential reach of the service cloud to millions of companies around the world."

Saleforce will add the Assistly services to its Service Cloud line of customer service applications.