Eric Yuan and Rowan Trollope: 5 Big Keys To Zoom-Five9 Merger

‘Our ability to bring these things together natively is going to be a total game-changer. Nobody’s done it, and we can absolutely revolutionize this space,’ says Five9 CEO Trollope regarding its upcoming merger with Zoom.

‘A Total Game-Changer:’ Yuan And Trollope Tout Blockbuster Merger

The combination of Zoom and Five9 will be “a total game-changer” in the global communications market with plans to “absolutely revolutionize” the entire industry, said Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan.

“That’s really the biggest opportunity here, the millions and millions—tens or even hundreds of millions —of phones that are out there that have to be replaced. And when you replace that phone system, you have to replace the contact center. So our ability to bring those two things together is incredible,” said Trollope recently during a Q&A call with media and analysts. “From the perspective that I look at with Zoom’s half-a-million customers, that’s an incredible opportunity to go back into that base and add contact center to every single one of those customers.”

It’s not just the technology synergies Zoom and Five9 share that will shake up the worldwide unified communications market—it’s also their existing co-selling partnership and joint customers.

“Rowan’s team, and our team, we were already working together for a while to land so many successful deals together,” said Yuan. “And this is what customers told us, ‘Hey, your solutions are great. And the Five9 solution is awesome. And the two together’—the customers like that.”

CRN breaks down the biggest keys and boldest remarks from Trollope and Yuan regarding Zoom’s blockbuster $14.7 billion acquisition of Five9 that is slated to close in the first half of 2022.

‘Millions Of Phones’ Need Replacements With The Opportunity To Add Contact Center To ‘Every Single’ Customer

The CEOs said market acceleration is not just happening in videoconferencing and in the contact center space, but in phones—millions of which need to be replaced. With the new Zoom Phone cloud-based phone offering, the opportunity is massive to add new Five9 contact center customers.

Trollope said the phone market is “wide open” with “a lot of legacy that has to be replaced.” Zoom and Five9 are looking to combine their technologies under one roof.

“That’s really the biggest opportunity here, the millions and millions—tens or even hundreds of millions —of phones that are out there that have to be replaced. And when you replace that phone system, you have to replace the contact center. And so our ability to bring those two things together is incredible,” said Trollope. “From the perspective that I look at with Zoom’s half-a-million customers, that’s an incredible opportunity to go back into that base and add contact center to every single one of those customers.”

The merger will allow the companies to cross-sell Zoom Phone to Five9 customers and bring Five9’s contact center to Zoom’s largest customers, the CEOs said.

“So with Zoom’s entrance into the phone space with the best technology—this is unquestionably the best technology—the ability to combine those together and access a part of the market that, candidly, we didn’t really have access to before [is huge],” said Trollope. “What the market really needs, that segment of the market that’s sort of the consolidated IT buyer, they need a single solution from a single vendor. And so it just looked to us like an incredible opportunity to accelerate the growth that we’d been having by selling contact center and to hopefully accelerate Zoom’s progress on the phone side. … It’s all about synergies.”

Integrated Offering And Go-To-Market Teams Ahead

Both CEOs said when the deal closes the two companies will create an integrated offering as well as an integrated go-to-market team. The merger of the two companies won’t disrupt any sales motion, with Zoom teams eventually selling Five9 products and vice versa.

“We’re already selling together. And a lot of these times when you look at acquisitions like this, deal execution risk is one of the key headlines. In this case, this is hand-in-glove because we’re already working together,” said Trollope (pictured). “So that risk is really off the table. I mean, we know that our customers want to buy our products both together, and we’re already selling them together—we’re just doing it through separate sales teams. So I think this marriage is going to really accelerate what was already going on with very little risk on that front.”

The leaders said both companies are continuing to invest in their teams across all functions. Zoom plans to work very closely with the Five9 management team up until the deal closes to work on how to best align the teams going forward.

An ‘$86 Billion Combined Addressable Market’

Trollope and Yuan said their companies share much in common—from customers to culture—but a huge opportunity Zoom and Five9 are both tackling is the enormous transition around the cloud.

Zoom’s total addressable market (TAM) is $62 billion, which includes its chat, meetings, phones, video webinars, APIs, application marketplace and Zoom Rooms portfolio. Five9’s TAM is $24 billion, and its portfolio includes offerings around workflow automation, intelligent virtual agents, dialer and routing, and the emerging work-from-home market.

“Together, I know that we can take the pole position in pursuing what’s now going to be an $86 billion combined addressable market,” said Trollope. “Also, like Five9, Zoom is obsessively focused on their customers and making customers happy, and you have an incredible corporate culture. We here at Five9, we have been sort of doggedly pursuing this mission to make customers happy by making customer service a more human experience.”

In joining forces with Zoom, Trollope said there’s a big opportunity to accelerate its pursuit of best-of-breed customer service solutions at a global scale for the first time.

“For example, we’ll get the opportunity to bring Five9’s best-in-class Cloud Contact Center together with Zoom’s world-leading communications platform,” Five9’s CEO said.

Bringing Video Into The Contact Center: ‘A Total Game-Changer’

Zoom and Five9 want to combine Five9’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) offering with Zoom’s broad communications platform to transform how businesses connect with their customers. Zoom and Five9 plan to create a customer-centric engagement platform that is modern, reliable and simple and can be sold across both customer bases.

“We believe this acquisition can bring together best-in-class video and contact center solutions to create a leading customer engagement platform that will redefine how companies of all sizes engage with their customers,” said Yuan.

Specifically, Trollope said he’s very excited to bring video into the contact center.

“In the short term, there’s tremendous amount of interest from our customers for simple use cases like ‘See what I see?’” said Five9’s Trollope. “IT help desks all over the world already use Zoom for just this exact case. Because you call up and there’s some sort of problem with your computer. The last thing that the contact center rep wants to do is be sort of giving you directions with their voice. It’s much better to be able to take over your screen and control your computer. That’s already happening organically. So our ability to bring these things together natively is going to be a total game-changer. Nobody’s done it, and we can absolutely revolutionize this space.”

Yuan Touts Trollope As A ‘Good Friend;’ Zoom And Five9 Have Been Co-Selling ‘For Years’

Both CEOs praised each other for their strong co-selling and partnership as well as each other’s leadership abilities. Zoom and Five9 have been partnering for years.

“We already partnered together. We already landed so many large deals in education, in retail, etc., and customers told us they want to have a solution from one vendor,” said Yuan (pictured). “Rowan’s team, and our team, we were already working together for a while to land so many successful deals together. And this is what customers told us, ‘Hey, your solutions are great. And the Five9 solution is awesome. And the two together’—the customers like that.”

Yuan went so far as saying his “good friend” Trollope was one of the main reasons why Zoom wanted to partner with Five9 in the first place.

“Rowan is such a good leader, not only in CCaaS but also in UCaaS as well. He really understands what’s going on with the conferencing, the Zoom Phone, you name it, right? So he and I always exchange ideas,” said Yuan. “He also specifically gives me great feedback about what an integration looks like, how we can populate AI, how to drive the future customer engagement, [etc.]. There’s lots of innovations from us joining forces together.”