Salesforce to buy voice AI firm Cresta for customer service
- Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, a voice-first CX platform.
- Cresta’s voice agents work for brands including Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines.
- The Salesforce deal is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal 2028.
- Cresta will keep supporting the contact center and telephony platforms customers use.
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, which Salesforce describes as the voice-first operating system for customer experience. Its voice agents handle customer calls, and its platform guides human representatives in real time.
The deal adds a voice-first customer experience platform to Salesforce’s Service Cloud. It is expected to close in the first quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2028.
Voice agents and human coaching
Salesforce announced the agreement in a news release on Nov. 2.
Salesforce says Cresta’s voice agents hold natural, real-time conversations, handle interruptions and operate at enterprise scale for brands including Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines.
The same platform guides human representatives during calls, analyzes every interaction, and tests and improves voice agents. Salesforce says it holds people and voice agents to the same standard of quality.
Connecting calls to the customer record
Salesforce says customer conversations are too often trapped in silos, cut off from customer context and the tools teams use to act.
Together with Service Cloud, the companies aim to connect every conversation to the customer and to outcomes such as resolution, retention and revenue.
After closing, Cresta will continue to support the contact center and telephony platforms its customers rely on.
Where service is hardest
“Voice is where service is hardest to get right, and where it matters most to customers,” said Kishan Chetan, executive vice president and general manager of Agentforce and Service Cloud at Salesforce.
He said Cresta has built voice agents that handle complex, high-volume calls for some of the world’s largest brands.
Cresta’s view
“Now, by uniting our platform with Salesforce, we will realize our full vision at scale,” said Ping Wu, CEO of Cresta.
Wu said the combination would embed real-time conversation intelligence and agentic experiences directly into Salesforce’s customer service platform.
Partners in the contact center
Cresta has worked with outsourcers such as TELUS Digital, which became its preferred CX implementation partner in June, as we reported.
The deal needs customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
What it means for buyers
For contact center operators and outsourcers that run Cresta alongside other platforms, Salesforce’s pledge to keep supporting those systems matters. Buyers can expect tighter links between voice AI and CRM data inside Salesforce.
Companies evaluating conversational AI for their contact center can compare providers on OA’s list of the top AI outsourcing companies.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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