Vancouver’s Hootsuite is purchasing Montreal chatbot platform Heyday for $60 million. Heyday’s platform enables brands to develop “conversational AI” in order to better communicate with customers, at scale.

Hootsuite is a longtime social media management platform, originally founded as a social media organization tool that allowed people and brands to see and schedule posts. It now has over 200,000 paid accounts and millions of users, spanning brands and organizations of all sizes.

The new acquisition will allow Hootsuite’s customers to leverage chatbots in their own customer experience efforts.

Heyday offers an enterprise customer messaging platform that integrates with e-commerce platforms. It also helps enable personalized customer experiences via chat and video. The company works with leading brands such as Lacoste, Decathlon, Cirque du Soleil, Danone, Rudsak, and more.

“Social is the new interface of commerce and customer care,” said Hootsuite CEO Tom Keiser. “Modern day brands have to manage a multitude of daily interactions and conversations at scale—which is impossible to do without AI automation. With the acquisition of Heyday, Hootsuite will now give AI capabilities to marketing, sales and support teams globally so they can deliver exceptional experiences at scale.”

A release from the two companies says that the adoption and use of social media has increased dramatically since the start of the pandemic. Hootsuite says that over 4.2 billion active social media users are spending on average two hours and twenty five minutes a day on social and messaging platforms.

A study by Edison Research found that 39 percent of social media users expect a reply from companies within sixty minutes, yet the average response time is five hours. Brands can use Hootsuite to respond with personalized responses at scale in real-time. Now with its acquisitions of Sparkcentral, and now Heyday, Hootsuite says its customers will have more tools to foster customer relationships.

“Hootsuite believes in the power of personalized marketing and frictionless customer experiences that build trust and relevance,” said Keiser. “The new generation of shoppers want to engage with brands by making purchases and receiving real-time customer service on social. The relationship starts and ends on social.”

Heyday can integrate with branded websites and apps, product feeds and order tracking management systems. The platform allows brands to give customers virtual support and personalized recommendations. They say that helps boost engagement and conversion.

“We created Heyday’s conversational platform to make buying from a brand as easy as messaging a friend,” said Steve Desjarlais, Co-Founder, Heyday. “Together with Hootsuite, we will bridge the gap between physical and digital brand experiences by leveraging social and messaging channels as the anchor and golden thread of the customer
journey.”