Salesforce acquires Listen Labs, whose agents conduct end-to-end customer research

The start-up entrusts its agents with the design, recruitment, conducting of interviews and synthesis of qualitative research, drawing on a pool of over 50 million participants.

Salesforce signed a definitive agreement on September 29 to acquire Listen Labs, an AI-driven customer research platform. The amount of the deal was not disclosed; Salesforce is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2027, subject to regulatory approval.

Months of research reduced to a few days

Listen Labs automates the entire chain of a study: its agents write the protocol, recruit respondents from a network of more than 50 million people, conduct interviews in more than 120 languages and draw a summary of them. The platform also offers "digital twins", customer simulations built on real behaviors, to test a product or a message before its release.

Salesforce plans to connect these capabilities to Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud and the rest of its AI offering. For Alfred Wahlforss, co-founder and CEO of Listen Labs, the challenge is to be able to listen to the entire customer base rather than a handful of people.