Zendesk Relate 2018 Recap: The Future of CX Is Bright

Zendesk’s annual user conference, Zendesk Relate, took place earlier this month in San Francisco, CA. Squelch was happy to be a sponsor — fueling passionate CX professionals from around the world one espresso at a time.

It’s always exciting when we can show appreciation for customer support and success agents, and we were thrilled to also award one lucky agent a well-deserved vacation to Hawai’i!

Hot Topic: AI

Zendesk Relate billed itself as “talks, training, and activities with the most passionate customer experience folks from around the world,” and the conference did not disappoint. There was innovation around practically every corner, and just about everyone was talking about artificial intelligence (AI).

There are, of course, many different opinions and concerns about the appropriate role for AI in CX. But the prevailing outlook was positive, and it’s one that we share. At Squelch, we believe the CX industry has an opportunity to lead the way in the use of AI for the benefit of customers, as well as customer support and success agents.

To provide an elevated customer experience, you must have access to the right information and have the ability to transform that information into actionable insight at the moment it’s needed. By using AI to augment rather than replace the talents of customer support and success agents, customers can be helped more quickly and successfully.

Launch of Zendesk Sunshine

We also learned a lot at Relate about Sunshine, Zendesk’s new universal CRM platform. As the name suggests, Sunshine is intended to “brighten the customer’s day” by enabling businesses to easily connect customer insights and integrate them with other Zendesk partners.

The platform is designed with a clear emphasis on collaboration, not only bolstering existing Zendesk partner relationships but also fostering mutually-beneficial partner-to-partner relationships. Sunshine is hosted on AWS and its APIs facilitate free custom objects, plug-and-play apps, and journey tracking at scale for businesses to improve their customers’ lives.

Congrats to Zendesk on this exciting announcement! 🎉

Benefits of Collaboration

Squelch is also a big believer in this collaborative approach. No single technology provider can solve all of the needs of CX professionals. It’s gratifying to see others in the industry gravitate toward this understanding and innovate in a way that brings previously-disconnected vendors and disparate data together for the customer’s benefit.

Squelch integrates with third-party platforms and customer-focused channels and tools to quickly surface the information an agent requires to deliver elevated CX. Our solution overcomes the silos and stranded data common to enterprises, empowering customer support and success heroes with the context-rich intelligence they need.

If the spirit of collaboration we saw at Zendesk Relate is any indication, expect to see even greater efforts by CX technology providers to both innovate and integrate for the good of the customer in 2019 and beyond.

Featured image credit: Matt Hicks, Head of Communications at Zendesk, via Twitter