Zendesk Debuts Sophisticated Real-Time Analytics Solution

Advanced capabilities in Explore Enterprise will allow businesses to use customer service data to inform decisions across support, sales, product and more

Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE: ZEN) today announced the launch of Explore Enterprise, the newest solution within its service-first CRM platform, which enables companies to analyze real-time data in order to understand changing needs. As global ticket volume reaches record highs, leaders can use Explore Enterprise to share relevant insights instantly with other teams and departments, helping them make faster decisions to improve their entire customer experience.

"Over the past few months, companies in India have been striving to adapt to the changing needs and demands of their customers as the pandemic continues to unfold and new trends emerge. Our Benchmark Snapshot Report indicates that even though service requests may finally be stabilizing after months of volatility, higher volumes may continue to persist, at least for a foreseeable future. Therefore, having timely insights are even more crucial for businesses to spot gaps in their customer service and quickly implement modifications that people expect. With the ability to stay a step ahead of their customers and proactively improve their overall customer experience journey, Explore Enterprise will help many businesses in India not just survive, but thrive in today’s landscape," said KT Prasad, MD and RVP Sales, India & SAARC at Zendesk.

“Customers are seeking more support from businesses than ever before, which is putting increased pressure on CX leaders and their teams,” said Shawna Wolverton, EVP of Product, Zendesk. “With Explore Enterprise, Zendesk gives companies the ability to analyze data in order to have a clear view of customer trends they are seeing across our Support and Sales Suites. These comprehensive insights allow businesses to quickly address emerging challenges and opportunities not just in customer service, but throughout their entire business.”

Zendesk customers such as Mailchimp are already benefiting from using Explore’s reporting analytics to understand trends in over 30,000 tickets a month. “It’s about understanding our data as a whole, and being able to look at the big picture,” said Spencer Caratti, Senior Director of Customer Support at Mailchimp. “We’re able to take that cumulative voice of the customer and distill that down to figure out what needs to be prioritized and make meaningful fixes that happen."

With real-time analytics and enhanced team collaboration features, Explore Enterprise enables leaders to manage and scale their business by:

• Monitoring data across customer support channels with pre-built and customizable live charts
• Acting on current trends by setting threshold alerts to see when teams are under a heavy load
• Improving productivity and reducing context switching with embeddable dashboards
• Boosting team collaboration with advanced report sharing and scheduling capabilities inside and outside the organization

“There is still a massive global shift towards digital transformation, and that has recently accelerated across every industry sector. Businesses must respond to this new pace of change and the organizations that are already digitally driven will pivot faster,” said Sheryl Kingstone of 451 Research.

Explore Enterprise provides instant insight across Zendesk products including Support, Talk, Chat, Sell and Guide* to provide a comprehensive, unified view of the customer. This includes information on how customers are using social messaging for support and which channels they prefer for communication. These learnings enable leaders to refine how they serve customers over channels such as Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Messages, WeChat, and LINE. Additionally, teams will be able to bring in data from external third-party systems through integrations with Zendesk’s open and flexible CRM platform, Sunshine, for a holistic picture of their business.**

With visibility into customer data across channels, Explore Enterprise gives leaders the ability to make improvements beyond the support team, such as informing decisions across sales, engineering, marketing and other departments. For example, when a CX leader sees a support team falling behind on ticket resolution, they can promptly test potential solutions and implement the option that makes the most impactful change for agents. Additionally, a CX leader can see an increase in the number of page views about processing refunds and can adjust existing knowledge base content to better help customers get the answer they are looking for faster.

Zendesk Explore Enterprise is available starting on August 31, 2020. More information can be found on the Zendesk website.

*New Sell and additional Guide integrations are expected to be generally available Q4 2020.

**Sunshine integrations are expected to be generally available Q1 2021.

About Zendesk

Zendesk is a service-first CRM company that builds support, sales, and customer engagement software designed to foster better customer relationships. From large enterprises to startups, we believe that powerful, innovative customer experiences should be within reach for every company, no matter the size, industry or ambition. Zendesk serves more than 160,000 customers across a multitude of industries in over 30 languages. Zendesk is headquartered in San Francisco, and operates offices worldwide.

Tech and Analytics Redefine Retail Execution for Brands and Retailers in New Normal: Study

COVID-19 continues to disrupt consumer markets though demand is almost back to normal in most parts of India. The second edition of Bizom's COVID-19 Impact India report shares insights on the performance of the market from April to June as consumer businesses start to recover with easing of the lockdowns.

To develop the report, Bizom analysed data from approximately 30% of the retail universe across 400 districts, 2000 towns and cities of India, which covers a population of 800+ million.

From market data of the last 10 weeks, it is clear that recovery is well and truly underway. However, a few categories - Beverages and Personal Care continue to struggle and will see a massive impact on their sales volumes. Brands are adapting to the new normal by changing their route to market models and through large scale digital transformation of their supply chains.

[caption id="attachment_148842" align="aligncenter" width="611"] Chart 01: Week-wise breakup of demand from transacting outlets[/caption]

Also, rural India is recovering faster and average sales for rural was 40% higher than urban in June. Focus on rural is paramount for brands to drive growth and recover lost sales. The research involved analysing total sales data of 87 cities including metros, state capitals, B class cities etc.

[caption id="attachment_148843" align="aligncenter" width="486"] Chart 2: Demand break up in rural vs urban areas[/caption]

First among the key trends is the change in buying patterns from distributors, stockists and retailers. These channel partners are moving away from monthly and fortnightly replenishments of their stocks to weekly cycles. The trend is driven by a range of factors including stock availability and ability to give credit in the market among others.

Many brands are re-inventing trade models as they look to combat disruptions in their supply chains. They are relying on internal and external data, and investments in digital technologies to make strategic decisions that can improve their retail execution. They are beginning to rely on data insights to target stores with limited availability of their products. To enhance their customer targeting capabilities, they are using hyper-local data to identify regions and stores that are open in containment zones or are transacting even in times of lockdown. They are also signing up with tech-driven logistics partners to drive last mile order fulfilment.

To power these strategic changes, consumer brands are depending on digital technologies such as self-service apps where retailers can send their orders directly to the brand. Conversational commerce is fast gaining popularity where brands are engaging with consumers through WhatsApp and redirecting them to the nearest store that stocks the brand's products. These technological changes are aimed to make remote retail execution possible where all stakeholders in the downstream supply chain are digitised and salespeople can conduct their business on phone and through on-call solutions.

Performance across categories is almost back to normal levels though some regional and category variances exist. For example, Packaged Foods which saw a surge immediately after the first lockdown is now down by approximately 20%. However, it is Beverages that was most affected with almost 40% loss of sales at its peak season in April and May. Regionally, South India is performing better than other regions. West is lagging behind in recovery which is in line with the high incidence of COVID-19 cases in the region.

Brands are changing their RTM strategies in a bid to recover lost ground. Some of these changes include simplification of the supply chain. Sales data from April and May shows that brands are consolidating their product portfolio for operational reasons. They are focused on a smaller number of SKUs and fewer product launches. Consumers who are feeling the pinch of lowering incomes are also shifting to lower priced products or smaller pack sizes. The silver lining in the gloomy insights is that data from June shows that the industry is moving back to pre-lockdown levels and number of lines trading is now only approximately 10% as compared to February 2020.

[caption id="attachment_148844" align="aligncenter" width="628"] Chart 3: Variation in demand for low, medium and high-value SKUs between pre-lockdown and unlock-1[/caption]

A significant number of Bizom's customers across categories are investing heavily in digital technologies to improve their decision making and to bring more transparency in their supply chains. It includes digitisation of channel partners, investments in B2B E-commerce, remote retail execution and more. There are clear signs that B2B E-commerce is becoming an important channel for brands with categories of home care, confectionery, packaged goods and more.

Unsurprisingly, many brands are launching hygiene products which are completely outside their product portfolio. 5-10% consumer brands have launched new hand sanitisers and masks to support the COVID-19 demand.

Bizom's COVID-19 Impact report points to shifts in the consumption patterns but it's too early to say if these changes are here to stay.

For a detailed report, write to marketing@mobisy.com.

5 Growing Career Opportunities in Business Analytics

Traditionally, adapting to data-driven decision-making has not been a simple and readily acceptable proposition for organizations. In recent years, however, Business Analytics has become mainstream, as more and more enterprises are leveraging analytics to further their reach, boost sales, improve efficiency, and introduce better solutions and services. Leading brands, start-ups, and e-commerce majors are also utilizing business analytics to make their decision-making process speedier and resolve structural setbacks.

To stay abreast of the increasing demand for business analytics professionals, various institutions such as Jigsaw Academy have come up with different business analytics programs. With a certification in business analytics, both budding and experienced working professionals can embark on a thriving career in analytics. Here are a few growing career opportunities that you can avail with a certification in business analytics, such as one in IIM analytics course.

1. Business Analyst / Data Analyst

Essentially, a Business Analyst or a BI analyst can understand the business and data requirements to translate the operational requirements of clients. Moreover, the business analyst has deep domain expertise, being able to perform tasks such as data collection and reporting. Core skills required of business analysts include a combination of analytical and functional skills so that they can drive projects forward and deliver insights on value creation for organizations. 

The key difference between a Business Analyst (BA) and a Data Analyst (DA) is Bas work predominantly on the business end, understanding project scope and requirements, gathering and analyzing data to make effective decisions. On the other hand, DAs have to work with large datasets must have a quantitative background, and experience in different programming and analytical tools.

2. Business Analytics Manager

Business Analytics (or BA) Managers are currently one of the most sought after profiles. BA Managers have the responsibility to have domain knowledge, drive analytical solutions, and work closely with technical delivery teams to move these solutions to the production stage. 

As a Business Analytics Manager, you must have experience with Python, R, SQL, Tableau, SAS and Excel VBA. The role requires you to have a fundamental understanding of statistical concepts, predictive modelling techniques, and other advanced competencies. With an IIM analytics course, you can leverage the best combination of theory and analytical tools to develop skills crucial for data science field and jump-start your career as a BA Manager. 

3. Data Engineer

Being a Data Engineer, you are tasked with data pipelines, while working on use cases – taking them from pilot to the production stage. The role requires you to have an in-depth understanding of Hadoop-based technologies such as Hive, MapReduce, MongoDB, and Cassandra. 

Also, you must have a thorough background in and NoSQL technologies, data warehousing, and high-level programming languages (Python, R, SQL, and Scala). With a business analytics program from reputable institutions such as Jigsaw academy, you can develop an understanding of the entire Hadoop ecosystem, including database technologies such as Apache Spark and Impala. The business analytics curriculum also includes exposure to cloud computing and management strategies for cloud-based Hadoop and Spark ecosystems.

4. Machine Learning Engineer

Machine Learning (or ML) Engineers are expected to handle large volumes of data – a core competency needed in consumer-facing technology companies. As an ML Engineer, you have the responsibility of designing the solution architecture for applications, along with model training automation, testing & deployment of business solutions to ensure a continuous delivery pipeline. 

Therefore, you must have a thorough understanding of data structures, object-oriented programming, and algorithms. You must also have a background in machine learning techniques such as clustering, regression, decision trees, and neural networks along with structured & unstructured data mining and feature engineering.  

5. MIS Consultant/ Data Visualization Consultant

As an MIS Consultant, you will have to design and manage a platform for collection, analysis, and reporting of data along with dashboarding skills. In other words, you will have to design reports and dashboards, for which you must have extensive experience with various BI tools and SQL. 

MIS Consultants must have core skills for business analytics such as Data Mining, job-oriented Analytics & Reporting capabilities (using MS-Excel, MS-Access, VBA, SQL, and Tableau.) Moreover, you must have a strong understanding of VBA macros and strengthen them with insightful case studies.