Zendesk taps AWS to unlock ‘smarter, more personalised’ customer service

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.