Zendesk enhances its Sunshine CRM Platform

Zendesk, Inc. announced new functionality for its open and flexible CRM platform Zendesk Sunshine that lets companies connect and understand all their customer data. These capabilities built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) help companies boost agent productivity and personalize customer experiences with a complete view of their customers’ activity across systems.

“Modern enterprises need to move fast and need not be slowed down by the anchor of cumbersome, legacy technology. We built Sunshine with AWS because it’s modern, agile, and it’s what our customers want,” said Adrian McDermott, President of Products, Zendesk. “We are impressed by how our customers are integrating other developer tools and building on Sunshine to break down data silos and deliver better customer experiences.”

According to CCW Digital, 74% of customers feel agents do not have enough context to solve their problems. In addition to Custom Objects, starting this month, companies can leverage powerful Sunshine features such as Custom Events, Unified Profiles and the AWS Events Connector to power differentiated experiences across Zendesk and their own applications. With these capabilities, agents can:

·       View every interaction with their customers, regardless of the system.

·       Tie all of their accounts into one comprehensive picture of their customer.

·       Harness the power of AWS with a real-time streaming events connector.

Zendesk also announced a new e-commerce integration that processes events, such as billing, which allows businesses to provide real-time help to their customers. For example, an agent can see when a customer’s credit card is rejected and provide support in order for the customer to successfully complete their purchase.

Additionally, as part of their Early Access Program (EAP), Zendesk launched new workflow tools and integrations with partners such as Workato, Qualtrics and Narvar that help companies automate and scale experiences by leveraging an end-to-end view of the customer. With these capabilities, companies can:

·       Easily automate manual tasks so agents can speed up work and make employees more productive.

·       Leverage the data within Zendesk or third-party systems to trigger actions and enhance processes.

·       Create powerful flows that can be reused across processes so companies don't waste valuable development resources.

Customers are already benefiting from using Sunshine features such as Custom Events and Unified Profiles to give agents a complete view of the customer and leverage data to personalize the experience.

Sunshine Custom Events, Unified Profiles and the AWS Events Connector will be available later this month.