Skip to main content

After 2 rejected deals, Zendesk considers its next steps

By

When Zendesk spurned a $17 billion acquisition offer earlier this month, it did so partially on the basis that the proposed transaction undervalued the company, especially in light of its then-pending $4.13 billion attempt to purchase Momentive/Survey Monkey.

But after investors rejected that deal on Friday, it left open questions about how the company proceeds from here.

On February 10, Zendesk declined a major offer from a consortium of private equity firms, partially because it projected that it would have $5 billion in revenue by 2025. With the Momentive deal off the table, the company now anticipates $3.4 billion worth of revenue in the same year, a significant $1.6 billion difference.

Was Momentive’s potential revenue sufficient to justify the price tag that Zendesk was ready to pay, its plunge into the customer experience market, and the fact that it would have led the acquirer away from its core customer service orientation?

Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials, says it’s unlikely that SurveyMonkey will become a big player in the customer experience market. “From a CX perspective, I didn’t really see this as an acquisition that would have any real significant impact on the competitive landscape of the industry,” he said.

A product change at Zendesk appears to have helped the company reach more, larger customers, and accelerate its growth while improving its margins.

But you could argue that customer experience is still a logical area for Zendesk to move into, as company CEO and founder Mikkel Svane indicated in a blog post announcing the end of the Momentive deal.

“We believe true understanding comes from taking billions of customer interactions and transforming it all into actionable insights for our customers. We remain as committed as ever to creating value for customers by empowering them with rich, multi-dimensional customer intelligence capabilities and insights,” he wrote.

Leary doesn’t disagree, but says he sees survey technology becoming a smaller part of it as more automated signal gathering takes hold. “While surveys are an important tool to leverage in understanding the current mindset of customers, the acceleration of signals automatically created by digital interactions coming from human exchanges, as well as from using devices will continue to grow exponentially,” he said.



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/8tvin6Q
via Technology
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Nintendo Switch has been the US’s bestselling console for 23 straight months

By
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge It’s been a good two years for the Nintendo Switch. According to Nintendo, the gaming tablet has been the bestselling console in the US for 23 straight months. And according to data from the NPD Group, it just had its best October ever, moving 735,926 units of both the Switch and Switch Lite in the US. The company says that represents a 136 percent increase compared to last year. To date, the Switch has sold 22.5 million units in the US, and last week Nintendo revealed that more than 68 million units have been sold globally . “We’re excited about our momentum,” says Nick Chavez, Nintendo of America’s SVP of sales and marketing. Chavez puts the company’s big October down to two main factors. One is a better supply of stock; this year in particular, it’s often been hard to find a Switch on store shelves. This has only been exacerbated by increased demand due to a combination of the pandemic and the breakout success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons . ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Instagram accidentally reinstated Pornhub’s banned account

By
After years of on-and-off temporary suspensions, Instagram permanently banned Pornhub’s account in September. Then, for a short period of time this weekend, the account was reinstated. By Tuesday, it was permanently banned again. “This was done in error,” an Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch. “As we’ve said previously, we permanently disabled this Instagram account for repeatedly violating our policies.” Instagram’s content guidelines prohibit  nudity and sexual solicitation . A Pornhub spokesperson told TechCrunch, though, that they believe the adult streaming platform’s account did not violate any guidelines. Instagram has not commented on the exact reasoning for the ban, or which policies the account violated. It’s worrying from a moderation perspective if a permanently banned Instagram account can accidentally get switched back on. Pornhub told TechCrunch that its account even received a notice from Instagram, stating that its ban had been a mistake (that message itse...
Post a Comment
Read more

MVP versus EVP: Is it time to introduce ethics into the agile startup model?

By
Anand Rao Contributor Share on Twitter Anand Rao is global head of AI at PwC . The rocket ship trajectory of a startup is well known: Get an idea, build a team and slap together a minimum viable product (MVP) that you can get in front of users. However, today’s startups need to reconsider the MVP model as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) become ubiquitous in tech products and the market grows increasingly conscious of the ethical implications of AI augmenting or replacing humans in the decision-making process. An MVP allows you to collect critical feedback from your target market that then informs the minimum development required to launch a product — creating a powerful feedback loop that drives today’s customer-led business. This lean, agile model has been extremely successful over the past two decades — launching thousands of successful startups, some of which have grown into billion-dollar companies. However, building high-performing product...
Post a Comment
Read more