Tag: Zendesk

Singapore – Zendesk has announced the launch of ‘Relay,’ a new app that offers proactive messaging for companies using WhatsApp and SMS. Relay allows companies to proactively connect with customers at scale using outbound messages in WhatsApp and to manage all those conversations natively in Zendesk.

By deepening its partnership with Meta’s WhatsApp and SMS providers like Twilio, Zendesk empowers businesses to enhance their CX strategies significantly. This collaboration is designed to provide customer service teams with the tools to proactively keep customers informed, ensuring that crucial updates are delivered before customers need to seek out information on their own.

With Relay, customer service teams can improve targeting and personalisation by using dynamic content and targeted audience data, creating custom messaging templates, and boost customer loyalty, increase satisfaction, and drive higher sales through timely and relevant proactive communication.

Mike Keohane, regional vice president for business development at Zendesk, said, “Consumers now expect real-time, personalised communication from brands, akin to what they experience in their personal lives. By adopting proactive messaging strategies, businesses not only meet but exceed these evolving expectations, delivering timely and relevant information through channels that customers already use and trust.”

He added, “Relay will allow companies using Zendesk to proactively contact their customers through WhatsApp, to provide important updates that they might not be aware of. This can include examples such as reporting incidents, invites for exclusive opportunities, and requests for feedback on services or products.” 

Meanwhile, Maureen Chong, regional vice president for Asia at Zendesk, commented, “Conversational commerce is becoming the new standard in Asia Pacific, with consumers desiring more seamless experiences with the brands they interact with. That said, our CX Trends Report reveals a stark disconnect between what consumers in APAC desire–for everything to happen within the same chat–and the ability of APAC businesses to provide that. Solutions like Relay will help businesses bridge this gap in expectations, ultimately allowing them to marry immediacy with engagement while delivering personalised, quality CX at scale that will improve the bottom line.” 

Singapore – Regional healthcare company Doctor Anywhere has teamed up with Zendesk to enhance its user support capabilities and scale its operations using Zendesk’s Suite.

The Zendesk Suite enables customers to interact with Doctor Anywhere through their preferred channels, powered by automated workflows and intelligent bots. Its seamless integration and real-time analytics deliver smarter service at scale, empowering agent teams to collaborate effortlessly and respond to customers more quickly.

This partnership with Zendesk reinforces Doctor Anywhere’s dedication to delivering exceptional customer service while expanding its regional presence.

Lim Wai Mun, founder and CEO of Doctor Anywhere, said, “Delivering a seamless and intuitive healthcare experience has always been at the core of Doctor Anywhere, serving as the foundation for building trust and loyalty among our users. Partnering with Zendesk puts our users’ needs further in focus as we enhance the support they can expect from us. As we expand the business, we are also committed to continuously improving the quality of service we provide.” 

Meanwhile, Jenny Choo, regional vice president of Zendesk Asia Pacific, commented, “Zendesk is proud to be a partner with Doctor Anywhere. The way they’ve disrupted the medical services space and the way they’re breaking down the barriers to accessing medical services is admirable. We are happy to be part of a tech ecosystem that is delivering such important services and to be a part of their growth story.” 

Singapore – Around 82% of leaders in Singapore believe AI will make or break businesses, with 78% of them think traditional CX will be dead–and saying 2027 will mark the “death of traditional CX”. This is according to the latest data from Zendesk.

The report envisions a future where CX organisations become leaner, faster, and more effective, with AI at the helm to streamline processes, personalise engagement, and handle a higher volume of customer interactions. 

Moreover, the evolution will likely lead to smaller CX teams, as 74% of industry experts across Asia-Pacific predict a downsizing due to AI’s ability to simplify operations while delivering high quality service to customers. Industry experts in Singapore record the most muted response (63%) to the predicted downsizing, compared to their regional counterparts in Australia (84%) and India (73%). 

Industry leaders in the region also believe AI is changing everything about CX, with leaders in Singapore agreeing the least (85%) with this sentiment compared to leaders in India (92%) and Australia (90%). Despite this, leaders in Singapore show optimism for the future of CX in the next three years: 87% believe voice-activated self-service will be an option for all channels; 85% say integrated text, voice and video interactions will be combined into a single experience; and 81% believe all CX solutions will have built-in generative capabilities. 

Around 84% of them also believe there will be a fivefold increase in customer service interactions by 2027, with leaders confident in AI’s ability to maintain quality service. This shift will make operations smoother, decisions sharper, and boost market competitiveness. As AI takes over routine tasks, it will enable teams to be more efficient and control costs, allowing for effective scaling of business operations even as customer interactions increase. 

In Singapore, 70% of industry leaders believe all channels will be powered by AI in three years, with AI-assisted support augmenting human agents by providing real-time diagnostic assistance and recommendations. 

“Industry leaders will transform into customer-centric visionaries, equipped with a deep understanding of the solutions that truly resonate with customers. They will proactively apply AI, using real-time data for better customer experiences, and collaborate across departments to safeguard customers and swiftly innovate based on AI insights. This transition will empower CX leaders to deploy AI strategically, make smarter decisions, and effectively guide their teams through emerging tech trends and evolving customer behaviours,” Zendesk said in a press statement following the report’s release.

The report also notes that AI’s impact on CX organisations promises to be significant, reshaping the roles of agents, admins, and leaders to prioritise specialised skills. In fact, 86% of industry leaders in Singapore say agent roles will evolve to cross-functional roles for more holistic service, with three-quarters believing they will only handle complex escalations that involve in-depth troubleshooting. Agents will see their roles expand to include enhanced technical skills and a deeper understanding of technology.

Lastly, admin roles are on the cusp of a big change, becoming proactive guardians of business operations. They will increasingly rely on AI copilots and smart tools to manage automated interactions and to make AI-driven improvements. 

“In their day-to-day, admins will keep a real-time pulse on the quality of agent interactions, refine automation, predict staffing needs, and implement workflows suggested by AI. They will need to master using AI to enhance team performance, employ no/low-code tools for automation, make data-driven decisions, and balance workload between humans and AI to meet customer needs. This evolution will empower admins to spearhead strategic advancements and maintain efficient, effective operations,” the report also added.

Speaking on the report’s release, Craig Flower, chief information officer at Zendesk, said, “In the near future, AI will play a role in all customer interactions, moving us beyond traditional, manual service to more advanced, technological-driven experiences. That’s why leaders are proactively adjusting their strategies now to navigate the anticipated changes and leverage AI to its fullest potential. A transformation won’t happen overnight, but there will be a steady progression that develops over time. It’s going to redefine roles and improve experiences for CX teams and their customers.”

Meanwhile, Maureen Chong, regional vice president, Asia at Zendesk, commented, “Consumers today have been clear about the imperatives in their interactions with businesses – an AI-assisted, personalised experience that’s consistent across all platforms. CX leaders across Asia Pacific are feeling the pressure to adopt AI into their CX organisation, with over 90% saying the pace of change is overwhelming.”

She added, “With only a quarter of leaders in the region describing their AI adoption as advanced, industry leaders are recognizing the gaps and taking steps to strengthen their CX. Key areas they are addressing – enhancing data security, investing in new CX technologies, expanding AI and automation in service delivery, integrating generative AI and optimising self-service support. Done right this won’t just help businesses weather ongoing economic uncertainties – it will, in fact, give them a competitive edge.” 

Singapore – Customer service software company Zendesk has announced that it has completed its acquisition of AI-powered quality management platform Klaus, following its initial announcement back in January.

The acquisition of Klaus is the latest addition to the company’s existing workforce engagement management solutions which includes ‘Tymeshift’, a modern workforce management tool built exclusively for Zendesk.

With digital agents resolving more service inquiries without human interaction, having a QA solution that analyses both human and digital agent performance is crucial to maintaining quality control and providing enhanced customer service.

Taking this role, Klaus pinpoints conversations with positive or negative sentiment, identifies outliers, churn risk, escalations and follow-ups across all conversations – even those done by outsourced teams.

It also spots knowledge gaps and coaching opportunities that can be used to improve agent performance and productivity, all of which results in higher customer satisfaction.

Talking about the acquisition, Adrian McDermott, chief technology officer at Zendesk, said, “With Klaus as part of our WEM portfolio, we can empower businesses with the best AI-powered automated quality assurance in the market. By automatically assessing support using AI to pinpoint and fix gaps, AutoQA gives businesses 100 percent coverage of their customer conversations and a clear view of opportunities to improve, while removing the burden of manual review.”

Meanwhile, Kair Käsper, co-founder of Klaus, commented, “While most QA software can only score up to 5 percent of CX interactions, Klaus automates QA across 100 percent of customer support interactions. It uses AI to identify patterns, predict issues and suggest solutions making it a vital tool that improves service quality, enriches the customer experience, and ultimately enhances the reputation and success of the organisation.”

Singapore – Customer service software company Zendesk has announced it has signed a definitive agreement to officially acquire AI-powered quality management platform Klaus as part of its commitment to future-proofing its AI-powered customer experience.

The acquisition is expected to provide the company with new and transformative quality management capabilities that can increase efficiency and customer loyalty.

As QA software, Klaus’ AI scores 100 percent of customer support satisfaction. Its platform can precisely identify positive and negative sentiments, outliers, churn risk, escalations, and follow-ups across all conversations, including those from outsourced teams.

Furthermore, its AI software can also spot knowledge gaps and coaching opportunities that can be utilised to improve agent performance and productivity, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.

Klaus will also be the latest addition to Zendesk’s existing workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions.

With Klaus, Zendesk customers will be able to power their everyday customer interaction with a more consistent, high-quality service across every channel and across both humans and digital agents or bots.

Commenting on the acquisition, Martin Kõiva, CEO and founder of Klaus, shared, “Zendesk and Klaus share a vision of AI-led, personalised CX with businesses fully anticipating and acting on their customers’ needs. QA software plays a critical role in this, ensuring consistency, assessing both human and digital agent performance, and providing actionable insights for strategic planning. As part of Zendesk, we will continue to build and deliver these crucial capabilities, but now at an even greater scale.”

Adrian McDermott, chief technology officer at Zendesk, also added, “As AI drives up the speed and frequency of customer engagement, only AI-powered quality assurance (QA) can keep up as companies work to identify and fix gaps in their customer service operations. The combination of Zendesk AI and Klaus’ capabilities will help businesses navigate greater complexity and volume and ensure both digital and human agents deliver highly personal and empathetic service.”

Zendesk’s acquisition of Klaus is expected to be finished by the first quarter of 2024, upon receipt of required regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Australia – Global UGC provider Bazaarvoice has recently announced their partnership with customer service platform Zendesk for a new integration that builds smarter shopping experiences across the customer journey to improve customer service for retailers.

The Bazaarvoice and Zendesk integration enables users to build a user generated content program that efficiently responds to customer reviews and questions at scale while delivering support as well.

Through this integration, users can build customer profiles, manage their brand reputation at scale, increase customer engagement, learn about their customer base, create personalized customer support, and amplify consumer voices.

Review management is also more streamlined with the integration, as users can interact with the native content on their own sites through the Bazaarvoice network, which allows users to track and manage questions and reviews as well as freely choosing when to interact with their consumer base.  

Speaking on the integration, Mark Drosos, SVP of global partnerships at Bazaarvoice, commented, “Bringing together the power of Bazaarvoice and Zendesk, we are making it easier for our clients to be customer-centric.”

“This integration is a game-changer, enabling businesses to seamlessly gather and harness valuable customer insights while delivering exceptional support. By uniting two industry leaders, we empower brands and retailers to build stronger relationships, drive growth, increase lifetime value, and elevate the customer experience to unprecedented heights,” he added. 

Singapore – Software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Zendesk has announced new artificial intelligence (AI) technology and conversational commerce features in order to improve its customer experience (CX) offering across its user base. The announcement follows the recent conclusion of Zendesk’s flagship conference ‘Relate’.

‘Zendesk AI’, the company’s new AI tech feature, is an intelligence layer that makes personalised, efficient and more empathetic customer experiences (CX) accessible for all companies. This new AI feature comes after Zendesk’s recent partnership with OpenAI.

Some of the capabilities of Zendesk AI include advanced bots that automatically solve issues and provide more personalised, industry-specific and accurate responses; improved agent productivity through AI-powered insights and suggestions to arm agents with more knowledge and context; and intelligent triage using capabilities such as intent and language detection and sentiment analysis to classify customer requests and allow teams to respond accordingly.

Available today, Zendesk AI will help companies instantly improve service experiences, save time, better understand their customers, and create seamless interactions. The solution continues to learn over time, is fast to deploy, easy to use, and immediately adds value without the need for large teams of developers or months of implementation time.

Cristina Fonseca, head of AI at Zendesk, said, “While running and scaling a successful CX team is complex, using AI should be simple. “With Zendesk AI, our proprietary models are specifically trained for CX and designed to immediately deliver actionable customer insights. These foundational features are key to improving customer service quality and agent efficiency, with potential to be even more powerful when combined with [large language models] LLMs.”

Meanwhile, Zendesk’s conversational commerce is made possible through deepening its partnership with Meta’s WhatsApp and Shopify, to further enhance businesses’ CX strategies and empower them to create a better shopping journey for their customers.

The conversational commerce feature provides direct support, marketing, and sales all from within a conversation, such as the capability for agents to leverage knowledge about customers’ ongoing shopping habits/status to personalise their service; identify new revenue opportunities by understanding any shopper’s habits and purchase history; and using AI to automate conversions and recommendations.

Adrian McDermott, chief technology officer at Zendesk, commented, “While we’ve seen huge shifts in the way people shop over the past few years, one thing has remained constant – people prefer to communicate via messaging. Now that digital is the new storefront, businesses will be able to use conversational commerce, built on our powerful messaging platform, to create a richer, more dynamic and interactive experience with their customers, which will ultimately lead to increased loyalty and revenue.”

Singapore – Software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Zendesk has announced that it has integrated OpenAI across its software suite to expand AI-powered customer experiences for businesses.

At the moment, Zendesk has proprietary foundational models, which are customised and trained against decades of Zendesk customer experience (CX) data and industry-specific insights.

The combination of these models, Zendesk‘s industry-leading knowledge management solutions, and OpenAl enables businesses to save even more time by leveraging the power of generative Al to more effectively and efficiently resolve customer service cases. 

Moreover, the company’s software suite already includes many Al-powered CX features right out-of-the-box, such as conversational messaging, bots, knowledge management, advanced analytics, and self-service tools. The addition of OpenAl will provide businesses with a unique solution to enhance their customer experience and scale to levels that were previously unattainable. 

For Cristina Fonseca, head of Al at Zendesk, artificial intelligence can help business teams be more consistent, better understand customers, and derive insights from data.

“We provide the best Al tools that customers can start using in minutes. Our work with cutting-edge partners like OpenAl, helps us leverage the newest technology available to accelerate businesses’ ability to unlock the value of their customer interactions,” Fonseca said.

Singapore – Customer support tech company Zendesk, Inc. has announced a five-year strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The partnership aims to help businesses deliver personalised customer experiences at scale, with technology that grows with them.

The strategic collaboration will help businesses provide faster, tailored conversational experiences to customers across all channels while also improving the efficiency of support operations through the use of AI-powered tools, bots and analytics on an open and flexible service. 

Moreover, the collab will make customer experience (CX) more seamless for both customers and agents to help businesses to stay competitive, retain customer loyalty, and adapt to rapidly changing market conditions.

The SCA will also extend Zendesk Suite’s latest innovations in customer service to AWS and AWS Marketplace with the following capabilities:

  • Enterprise-grade, secure customer service programs and chatbots on reliable cloud architecture that scales with the business
  • Conversational experiences across potential customer channels and devices
  • Multi-channel support in Zendesk Sunshine Conversations, Amazon Connect, and AWS Contact Center Intelligence.
  • Personalised interactions and quick problem-solving with embedded chatbots 
  • Boosting customer retention by using AI to analyze customer emotion and take the best action 
  • Driving agent productivity with AI-based tools that help agents respond and resolve issues faster by providing self-service options, time-saving routing, and AI-powered workflows

“Zendesk has been both a member of the AWS Partner Network and a customer for many years, leveraging our cloud services to create innovative customer and employee experience solutions for customers,” said Ruba Borno, vice president, worldwide channels and alliances at AWS. 

She also added that the SCA with Zendesk will allow companies to personalise experiences using data, taking customer experiences to the next level and helping businesses automate and scale their customer service operations on the cloud.

Pascal Pettinicchio, vice president, alliances and corporate development at Zendesk, explained, “Zendesk research found that 61% of customers are excited by the prospect of immersive experiences, and 80% of businesses plan to increase their CX budgets in 2023. By taking advantage of easy-to-use software powered by Zendesk AI and AWS, CX teams can free up time and resources to focus on what they do best — creating powerful customer interactions.” 

He added, “Zendesk’s platform delivers high-level performance to provide enhanced customer experiences — we knew that, by collaborating with AWS, we could meet customers’ demands.”

Meanwhile, Steve Franklin, global head of customer service at Siemens Financial Services also commented that Zendesk brings ‘stability’ to their company’s customer service operations and allows them to provide unrivaled experiences and timely responses to their customers. 

“They help us quickly get control when volumes spike, both in terms of understanding what is happening, so we can take steps to proactively reduce the volumes and also in the handling of the queries, to reduce the backlog back down again,” he added.

Last year, Zendesk has also launched its Intelligent Triage and Smart Assist, its artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that empowers businesses to triage customer support requests automatically.

Singapore – Customer service tech Zendesk recently announced Intelligent Triage and Smart Assist, new artificial intelligence (AI) solutions empowering businesses to triage customer support requests automatically and access valuable data at scale. By democratising access to these solutions, Zendesk aims to help companies better understand intent and sentiment through account-specific, data-driven models that are customised for individual use cases and drive faster resolutions. 

According to Zendesk’s own study, only 7% of Singapore businesses are qualified as ‘CX Champions’ – those considered the highest standard-bearers – meaning there are only a few organisations in Singapore delivering exceptional customer services. Industry analysts also predict that AI will touch the majority of customer service interactions in the near future – but Zendesk research shows less than a third of companies are currently using AI to help their service teams become more efficient. 

Intelligent Triage and Smart Assist are the next step in Zendesk’s vision to create accessible CX AI for companies of all sizes. The technology uses proprietary industry expertise and insights from trillions of customer data points and applies a vertical lens, creating custom models for businesses that are capable of identifying the intent, language and sentiment of each customer interaction. 

This unique approach to applying machine learning creates more personalised and informed interactions to better serve customers. Specific inquiries, such as “I’m having problems with payment”, can be automatically sent to an agent equipped to handle billing for a quicker resolution, while inquiries that include language written in all capital letters or in a sarcastic way will indicate a highly negative sentiment and be routed to the top of the queue. 

The new capabilities will enable to instantly route and prioritise revenue drivers, ensuring agents are working on business-critical requests. Brands and companies will also be able to analyse distribution of requests so businesses can better plan operations, collaborate across departments and identify improvement opportunities supported by data for more efficient CX operations.

Other capabilities of the new solutions also enable to automatically guide agents on how to best resolve a customer’s issue in real-time, continuously boost accuracy as the AI solutions receive feedback on predictions and recommendations, and detect sensitive information automatically to meet compliance and security needs or extract confidential data like names, addresses, phone numbers, usernames, and financial info for use in workflows 

All these capabilities are offered out-of-the box, included with The Zendesk Suite Enterprise Edition, instead of requiring months of training or costly developer support. 

“When it comes to helping businesses of all sizes improve their CX delivery, an important part of the strategy is lowering the barriers of entry for adoption – and advanced technology such as AI and machine learning are often not accessible without expensive upfront costs,” said Wendy Johnstone, chief operating officer of Zendesk APAC. 

Meanwhile, Cristina Fonseca, vice president of product at Zendesk, said, “Instead of putting bots that aren’t fully trained in front of customers, causing frustration and many times lost business, Zendesk’s fundamentally different approach takes the burden and complexity off of customers, allowing companies to build powerful applications on top of a strong foundation. ” 

Intelligent Triage and Smart Assist technology are initially focused on retail/eCommerce use cases, with more industries to roll out.