Zendesk Expands Support Suite and Sunshine CRM Platform and Launches Sales Suite

Zendesk today released expanded versions of its Support Suite and Sunshine CRM Platform with new ways for companies to connect with customers and have natural conversations across all touchpoints. The company also launched its new Sales Suite.

"Today's digital-first customers expect real-time, ongoing, and personalized communication with companies, especially on messaging apps and social media," said Mikkel Svane, Zendesk founder, CEO, and chairman of Zendesk, in a statement. "These high expectations are changing how businesses think about providing a modern customer experience. With our new Support and Sales suites, we are enabling companies to take a conversational approach to customer experience, regardless of channel."

Since launching in 2018, the Support Suite has empowered companies to connect with customers on their channels of choice. The expanded Zendesk Support Suite now features new channels through social messaging services and an improved omnichannel agent experience. The new Support Suite allows businesses to see one comprehensive view of all of the latest conversations. The new agent workspace adapts to provide agents with the relevant context and tools whether the customer calls, emails, or messages the company. Additionally, businesses can surface contextually relevant information from external data sources in Sunshine, Zendesk's open and flexible CRM platform built on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

"Our customers reach out to us across several channels, including email, chat, and phone, and we want to make sure they're always able to connect on the channel they prefer," said Jonathan Bolton, senior vice president of operations at BombBomb, in a statement. "With Zendesk Support Suite, we're able to unify these channels in one place so that our support team can offer contextual, personal experiences, which has ultimately helped us boost our CSAT to 98 percent."

Support Suite also now includes emerging social messaging channels powered by Sunshine Conversations, Zendesk's recently launched conversational business platform. This allows companies to engage with customers and manage conversations on popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Messages, WeChat, and LINE, from one, unified agent workspace. Other social messaging capabilities include live notifications for agents and auto-responders.

Today, Zendesk also launched Zendesk Sales Suite, a fully integrated solution that automatically tracks all sales-related activities to provide sellers with context and insight. Sales Suite includes Zendesk Sell, Chat, Reach, and Voice and allows companies to do the following:

• Access multiple channels, such as email, texting, and voice;
• Speak with prospects directly on the website and convert them over to a lead from a single interface; and
• Give access to prospecting and data enrichment powered by Clearbit to personalize the sales dashboard.

"After seeing customer success with Support Suite, we are excited to introduce Sales Suite to companies' sales teams," said Adrian McDermott, president of products at Zendesk, in a statement. "The way customers buy has changed, and it is time for our sales process to change along with it. We thoughtfully paired these core sales tools to remove the difficulties of traditional, cumbersome sales software and create an easy yet powerful solution for sales reps to unite all browsing, prospecting, and purchasing experiences."

The new functionality for Zendesk Sunshine lets companies connect and understand all of 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 customer 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," McDermott said. "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."

In addition to Custom Objects, starting this month, companies can leverage Sunshine features, such as Custom Events, Unified Profiles, and the AWS Events Connector. With these capabilities, agents can do the following:

• View every interaction with customers, regardless of the system;
• Tie all of their accounts into one comprehensive picture of customers; and
• 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. Additionally, as part of the 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 do the following:

• Automate manual tasks;
• Leverage the data within Zendesk or third-party systems to trigger actions and enhance processes; and
• Create flows that can be reused across processes.

"With Sunshine, hundreds of integrations are simple for companies to select and configure," said Markus Zirn, vice president of business development at Workato, in a statement. "We're looking forward to furthering our partnership with automations that trigger activity in Zendesk and external systems to ensure a seamless customer experience."

"With Sunshine, organizations using both Qualtrics and Zendesk can now have a more complete view of their customers directly inside the support agent workspace," said R.J. Filipski, global director of business development at Qualtrics, in a statement. "With customer experience data on one platform, leaders can spend more time focusing on the actions that will drive the most impactful business outcomes."

Customers are already benefiting from 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.

"At Indochino, we developed the shopping experience of the future where customers design suits and shirts that are made just for them," said Jesse Marion, manager of customer experience at the menswear retailer, in a statement. "We're excited to leverage Zendesk Sunshine's new capabilities to integrate our customer data so agents have a complete view of what makes each person unique, from their fit and style to their personal preferences."

"Before Zendesk Sunshine, our customer support agents struggled with complicated CX systems," said Sean Benedict, customer experience operations manager at MakeSpace, in a statement. "Now our agents have a more holistic customer view in one place, seeing every customer event and the full history. Our team has everything they need to deliver a seamless and stress-free storage experience to our customers."

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

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