Cloud-based customer service software provider Freshdesk Inc. made its fifth acquisition in the past eight months, snapping up Airwoot, a startup division of MemeticLabs Technologies Pvt. Ltd. that uses machine learning to automate the process of delivering customer service over social media. Terms were undisclosed.

Freshdesk said Airwoot’s technology will be integrated into its own to improve automated social support capabilities, a process that is currently manual.

The acquisition continues Freshdesk’s push to become a major force in customer service CRM. Founded in India in 2011, it now claims 70,000 customers worldwide and has raised $95 million in six rounds for an estimated market capitalization of $500 million.

The company is tackling a mounting customer support problem for brands, particularly large ones that may have thousands of users interacting with them via social channels on a typical day. The problem isn’t just managing the volume; it’s also filtering through idle chitchat and offhand complaints to identify those messages that merit a response from customer service.

Social customer support is becoming a big-ticket item for some companies. Citigroup Inc. last year employed 17 full-time customer service representatives exclusively devoted to social media, according to Frank Eliason, who was global director of that company’s client experience team until last August.

Freshdesk’s social engagement platform comes with configurable rules and options that client service managers can use to customize social media monitoring to identify conversations that require a swift response. Keyword monitoring has its shortcomings, however, particularly as new trends and terms emerge. Customer sentiment is also expressed differently in different languages and by different age groups.

Airwoot uses machine learning to automate the process of identifying conversations on social media that require immediate attention, such as queries, grievances and incidents. It claims that its algorithms even predict when a conversation is likely to go viral.

Snapdeal, an Indian e-commerce site operated by Jasper Infotech Private Ltd. said it has used Airwoot to increase response rates to over 98 percent with an average response time of less than two minutes.

The deal comes amid some cooling of enthusiasm for social media-based customer support. A recent report by NICE Systems Ltd. and the Boston Consulting Group Inc. found that the percentage of people who said they turn to social media for customer service issues fell to 29 percent in 2016 from 36 percent in 2013 after jumping from just 13 percent in 2011. The primary frustrations respondents cited were delay and the inability of short-form social media like Twitter to deal with complex problems. Many said they end up talking to a customer support rep on the phone anyway.

Image by Jeff Turner via Flickr