Adobe Expands AI Agentic Offerings, Adds New Agent Capabilities in Adobe Experience Platform

• Adobe unveiled Product Support Agent, a new AI Agent in Adobe Experience Platform which helps marketers and experience teams resolve issues impacting marketing workflows
• Product Support Agent is the latest addition to Adobe’s suite of purpose-built AI Agents; it joins the now generally available Data Insights Agent, which simplifies the process of deriving insights from customer data in Customer Journey Analytics
• Product Support Agent and Data Insights Agent are powered by Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Agent Orchestrator, which allows businesses to build, manage, and orchestrate AI agents across Adobe and third-party ecosystems

Today, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced several updates to Adobe’s agentic functionality, including Product Support Agent, a net-new agent which provides an interactive, and guided way for marketers and customer experience professionals to diagnosis and resolve issues impacting marketing workflows in Adobe Experience Platform applications. As part of this expansion, Adobe is also announcing the general availability of Data Insights Agent, the first agent built on the Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, which provides the foundation for businesses to orchestrate purpose-built AI agents that engage directly with customers and support the daily work across Adobe applications and third-party ecosystems.

Product Support Agent is designed to support marketing and customer experience teams in their Adobe Experience Platform applications by providing an interactive way to troubleshoot, diagnose, and escalate issues. Too often, marketers experience operational roadblocks that can interrupt workflows and pull their focus away from strategic, high-impact work. Troubleshooting application issues and managing support tickets, can be time-consuming and distract from core responsibilities as they often involve cross-functional inputs and collaboration, and can mean tracking down fixes that require navigating complex workflows and technical documentation, distracting them from core responsibilities. By delivering in-the-moment troubleshooting guidance and case management, Product Support Agent enables faster resolutions and greater operational efficiency.

As soon as a user asks for help with creating a support ticket within the AI Assistant conversational interface, the Product Support Agent gathers relevant contextual data from the environment automatically—logs, metadata, user session details, and more—and accurately pre-fills the support case, which the user can review before submitting. This ensures critical information is captured from the start and enables the agent to handle triage-level tasks like ticket categorization, prioritization, and context gathering, so support teams can begin working on the issue earlier with no delays.

Users can also get real-time status updates for of any open ticket directly through the same AI Assistant interface, without switching tools or logging into separate portals. Product Support Agent will soon be able to provide proactive notifications whenever there’s a change in case status. This reduces follow-ups and means support case requesters can be alerted as soon as there’s progress, allowing them to communicate confidently with stakeholders and stay in control of the support experience.

As part of this expansion, we are also announcing the general availability of Data Insights Agent, the first agent built on the Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator. Data Insights Agent allows users to query data directly using natural language, just simple questions like “What channels drove the most conversions last week?” and in an instant the Data Insights agent builds the visualization in the Analysis Workspace within Adobe Customer Journey Analysis.

Data Insights Agent not only simplifies insight generation for marketers by allowing them to query their data in natural language and generate visualizations from scratch, but also lets you make changes to previously built visualizations and build analysis iteratively.

“Adobe’s Data Insights Agent will be a major unlock for our organization, shortening the time it takes to find and deliver actionable insights,” said Lokesh Alluri, digital and marketing analytics manager, Lenovo. “By streamlining time-intensive workflows, from reporting to forecasting, we can ensure that every stakeholder has timely data to drive initiatives that enhance customer satisfaction.”

Experience Platform Agents are built for a new era of work where AI is powering creativity and marketing execution to help teams move faster, work smarter, and stay in control. Agentic AI will never replace human expertise, but it can certainly work alongside experts to help create more capacity so they can focus on creative solutions that will drive greater business impact than ever before.

Zendesk Revolutionizes Customer Experience With the Launch of Agentic AI-powered Zendesk Resolution Platform

Zendesk also announces the Employee Service Suite, an intelligent solution that transforms employee service

Zendesk, a pioneer in Agentic AI-powered service, announced today at its annual Relate conference the launch of the Zendesk Resolution Platform, aimed at redefining customer experience. This platform, purpose-built for service by the largest AI service software provider, introduces a suite of advanced tools that seamlessly integrate Zendesk AI Agents, a comprehensive knowledge graph, actions and integrations, governance and control, and measurement and insights. Together with human expertise, the Zendesk Resolution Platform empowers businesses to deliver exceptional service and ensure a clear path to issue resolution.

“The only metric that matters in customer service is resolution. The Zendesk Resolution Platform is not just making service faster - it is making Agentic AI actually work for service, solving every issue with less effort and better outcomes,” said Tom Eggemeier, CEO of Zendesk. “Our network of AI agents built with service at the heart works like a well-trained search and rescue team, ensuring every interaction leads to a resolution. And as the only large service software provider offering outcome-based pricing, we make sure customers only pay for problems that are resolved - not for interactions or failed attempts. Resolutions are the future of customer service, and Zendesk is leading this revolution.”

Maureen Chong, Regional Vice President, Asia and India, Zendesk, adds, “As we look at the vibrant and rapidly evolving Indian market, it’s clear that businesses are not just seeking faster service but are demanding smarter, more efficient solutions that drive real outcomes. The digital transformation journey that many organisations in India are on presents a unique opportunity to leverage AI and advanced technologies to enhance customer and employee service. With our AI-powered Zendesk Resolution Platform and outcome-based pricing, we are uniquely positioned to meet these needs, enabling Indian businesses to navigate the complexities of customer and employee service with agility and precision while only paying for successful resolutions.”

Zendesk Relate 2025 - Tom Eggemeier

The Zendesk Resolution Platform is built on five core components all with new products and features announced today at Relate 2025:

Zendesk Agents

• Next Generation Zendesk AI Agents designed to enhance service delivery by providing faster, more accurate responses to customer inquiries, ensuring that every interaction is handled with precision and care. These new Zendesk AI Agents reason, learn, and adapt to even the most complex inquiries, providing customers with real resolutions.
• Upgraded AI Agent Builder is a dynamic platform that allows businesses to create customised AI agents tailored to their unique service needs, enabling a more personalised customer experience and saving admins time.
• New Copilot enhancements from Zendesk include the ability for businesses to seamlessly integrate Zendesk knowledge sources and external systems, enabling Copilot to autonomously run key business procedures on behalf of agents. For instance, the Copilot can generate context-rich responses using the help centre or effortlessly execute tasks in platforms like Jira or Slack. Best of all, setting up these integrations is now easier than ever, with no code required. These copilot enhancements significantly streamline workflows, enabling quicker resolutions while boosting agent productivity.

Comprehensive Knowledge Graph

Zendesk Knowledge Graph consolidates service knowledge for immediate access by Zendesk agents. This robust foundation powers over 50,000 active service knowledge bases, making it the largest service-specific resource globally. Businesses can easily index and connect their own knowledge sources without complex setup.

Zendesk Knowledge Builder uses AI to analyse past tickets and key business context to create a ready-to-use knowledge base, ensuring timely access to the right information for faster resolutions for those starting without a fully developed knowledge base. With Knowledge Builder, there’s no long setup and no content drafting.

New Generative Search feature provides immediate answers right at the top of the help centre and eliminates the need to sift through links. Unlike competitors, Generative Search will be included in every Zendesk plan.

Actions and Integrations

Action Builder empowers businesses to easily connect and automate AI and human agent workflows across any system without coding. With Action Builder, businesses can easily create the connected service experiences they need and that their customers crave, all within Zendesk and free from expensive vendors and custom development.

App Builder is a new no-code solution for building apps in Zendesk, leveraging generative AI. With app builder, admins can develop custom apps using natural language prompts.

Governance and Control

AI Reasoning Controls give real-time visibility into the AI agent’s thinking. Now, businesses can see how their AI interprets customer requests, why the AI chooses certain responses, and where to refine the agent's behaviour - ensuring it operates exactly the way businesses intend.

Measurement and Insights

Custom Quality Assurance (QA) is the only service QA that scores 100% of interactions across human and AI conversations. And now using the power of generative AI, Custom QA surfaces hidden insights giving businesses complete visibility into service quality. Custom QA doesn’t stop at ticket scoring or agent coaching either, Custom QA can generate reports such as ones that show every ticket where customers are discussing competitors.

AI Insights Hub is a centralised AI operations centre that shows all of the AI features that are active and highlights key usage metrics. Admins also get AI-driven recommendations, whether it’s suggesting automating responses or refining workflow routing rules.

"Zendesk's launch of the AI-powered Resolution Platform marks a significant step forward in enhancing customer and employee service experiences. By integrating advanced AI capabilities with human expertise, Zendesk has the potential to position itself as a leader in the evolving landscape of AI-driven solutions," said Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group. "As businesses increasingly adopt these technologies, the focus on delivering seamless, efficient service will undoubtedly shape the future of customer engagement."

An Upgraded Enterprise Contact Centre Solution

Zendesk for Contact Centre is powered by AWS and enhanced with advanced voice capabilities with Zendesk's proposed acquisition of Local Measure. This solution redefines the contact centre landscape—think of it as the un-CCaaS. Zendesk for Contact Centre delivers all the capabilities of an enterprise contact centre solution, no matter the geography, call volume, or complexity. With AI seamlessly integrated throughout the call journey, Zendesk for Contact Centre is easier to set-up, use, and maintain.

Harnessing the Power of Customer Service, Now for Employees

Zendesk also announced the launch of the Zendesk Employee Service Suite. This versatile suite is designed specifically for internal support teams such as IT and HR, offering an intuitive yet powerful solution that equips teams to deliver exceptional employee service.

Designed for the Agentic AI era, the employee service suite features easy-to-deploy pre-trained AI that provides rapid resolutions and efficient, accurate service to employees. This suite includes essential tools for internal teams, including a service catalogue, new pre-built HRIS integrations, and a tailored agent workspace designed for employee service with task lists, approvals, and out-of-the box templates.

In the coming months, Zendesk will launch IT Asset Management to help companies track and manage the hardware and software employees rely on every day.

“The new employee service suite is easy to implement and scale across departments, ensuring quick time to value and a low total cost of ownership. Zendesk future-proofs employee service with an easily integrable, adaptable, and customisable solution that empowers organisations to navigate a rapidly evolving workplace while leveraging the power of Agentic AI,” added Eggemeier.

To catch up on all of the announcements from Relate 2025, please visit www.zendesk.com

About Zendesk

Zendesk powers exceptional service for every person on the planet. As a leader in AI-powered service, we offer the Zendesk Resolution Platform, designed to redefine customer experience with advanced tools that integrate AI Agents, a comprehensive knowledge graph, actions and integrations, governance and control, measurement and insights, and human expertise. Our purpose-built platform enhances service by combining automation and human insight for seamless interactions. Easy to use, easy to scale, and easy to get value from, Zendesk helps companies strengthen relationships, improve efficiency, and grow. Learn more at www.zendesk.com

Adobe Launches Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator for Businesses to Activate AI Agents in Customer Experiences and Marketing Workflows

• Adobe unveiled the Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, which enables businesses to build, manage, and orchestrate AI agents from Adobe and third-party ecosystems.
• A suite of ten purpose-built AI agents, built on Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, will augment the capabilities of marketing and creative teams to drive personalization at scale.
• Adobe introduced Brand Concierge, a new application for brands to configure and manage AI agents, delivering personalized, immersive and conversational experiences for consumers.
• Strategic partnerships with major companies, including Acxiom, Amazon Web Services, Genesys, IBM, Microsoft, RainFocus, SAP, ServiceNow and Workday, aim to ensure seamless execution of use cases across various AI agents.

Yesterday, at Adobe Summit – the flagship digital experience conference – Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) unveiled its strategy and product offerings for agentic AI. Innovating on the world’s most widely adopted marketing and customer experience platform, Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), Adobe has built-in agentic functionality that makes it easy for marketers to use purpose-built AI agents for optimizing websites, handling repetitive content production tasks such as resizing, refining target audiences, creating and optimizing channel experiments and scaling content and digital media production. Adobe also unveiled Brand Concierge, the first brand-centric agentic app that will represent the evolution of transactional chatbots and web-based agents to richer, brand-centered agent experiences that draw on a company’s unique brand attributes and customer data—creating a brand concierge experience personalized for every customer.

Each year, over one trillion experiences are being activated through AEP, enabling leading companies to connect real-time data across their entire organization and deliver standout customer experiences. AEP is the ideal experience platform to drive the next wave of AI agents. Adobe's latest AI innovations will reshape how businesses connect with customers and the daily work of marketers tasked with delivering and orchestrating impactful customer experiences. These offerings are powered by Adobe’s AI Platform, which unites AI agents and models across Adobe. This includes AI agents from third-party ecosystems, commercially safe Firefly models and secure third-party models, and first-party data insights – infused into Adobe applications. This comes to life in AEP, which brings together customer experience data, CX language models and AI Agent orchestration. Adobe is unifying marketing and creativity through its AI platform to deliver personalized experiences at scale.

“Adobe has a long history of working closely with CMOs, CIOs and their organizations to drive impactful customer experiences that are anchored in reliable and real-time experience insights,” said Anjul Bhambhri, senior vice president of engineering, Adobe Experience Cloud. “Agentic AI is a major leap forward that will accelerate workplace transformation. Adobe’s latest innovations will drive productivity gains for practitioners to free up time for creative ideation, while unlocking capacity for marketers to scale personalization through purpose-built AI agents.”

AEP Agent Orchestrator is rooted in a deep, semantic understanding of enterprise data, content and customer journeys through Adobe Experience Cloud—relied upon by leading brands to power digital business and deliver exceptional customer experiences. This enables agentic AI solutions that are purpose-built for businesses to deliver targeted and immersive experiences, with data governance and regulatory compliance built in. New innovations announced by Adobe today include:

Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator and purpose-built AI agents

Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator enables businesses to build, manage and orchestrate AI agents from Adobe and third-party ecosystems. With AEP as the foundation, agents are built with a deep understanding of customer data and content to enhance decision-making, as well as support for multiagent collaboration, and decision science and language models that enable dynamic and adaptive reasoning. Brands can also shorten time to value, as AEP data is brought together under Experience Data Model schemas, which derive meaning from unrelated data and enables impactful customer experiences. Today, billions of audience profiles are managed and activated through AEP.

Adobe unveiled a suite of Experience Platform Agents to be leveraged directly within Adobe enterprise applications. Built on Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, these out-of-the-box AI agents increase the capacity of teams by enhancing category-leading applications, such as Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (CDP), Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Journey Optimizer and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics. Adobe Experience Platform Agents will augment the capabilities of marketing and creative teams to drive personalization at scale. Adobe introduced ten AI Agents today including:

• Account Qualification Agent supports enterprise business-to-business (B2B) objectives by evaluating and advancing new opportunities to build sales pipeline and engage key members of a buying group.
• Audience Agent analyzes cross-channel engagement data to create and optimize goal-based, high-value audience segments, which can then be activated for widescale personalization campaigns.
• Content Production Agent helps marketers and creatives achieve scale by generating and assembling content based on a brief, while adhering to predefined brand guidelines.
• Data Insights Agent simplifies and expands the process of deriving insights from signals across an organization, enabling experience makers to visualize, forecast and remediate customer experience initiatives.
• Data Engineering Agent supports high-volume data management tasks, such as data integration, cleansing and security, a complex operation as businesses continue to connect disparate data across their organizations.
• Experimentation Agent enables teams responsible for personalization initiatives to hypothesize new ideas, simulate them, conduct impact analysis and seamlessly connect to applications where they can be turned into active experiments.
• Journey Agent enables teams to efficiently orchestrate cross-channel experiences by driving tasks across customer journey ideation, analysis and optimization.
• Product Advisor Agent supports brand engagement and funnel advancement through product discovery and consideration experiences that are tailored to individual preferences and past purchases.
• Site Optimization Agent enables always-on support to drive performant brand websites by automatically detecting, raising and fixing issues to boost customer engagement.
• Workflow Optimization Agent enables productivity gains and supports cross-team collaboration by monitoring the health of ongoing projects, streamlining approvals and accelerating workflows.

Adobe brand concierge for B2C and B2B businesses

A new generation of consumers is seeing value in having conversational experiences with their favorite brands. New insights from Adobe Analytics show a 1,200% increase in traffic to U.S. retail sites from generative AI sources (AI-powered chat services) in February 2025—and a 1,700% increase to travel sites—as consumers looked for purchase guidance, inspiration and available deals. Agentic AI ushers in a new era for how businesses and consumers interact, with AI agents that will be able to handle more complex tasks and make highly tailored recommendations. This can include everything from personalized trip planning in travel and hospitality to helping shoppers find the perfect product or service in retail.

With Adobe Brand Concierge—a new AI-powered solution built on AEP Agent Orchestrator—businesses will be able to configure and manage AI agents that guide consumers from exploration to confident purchase decisions, using immersive and conversational experiences. This offering will be multimodal, supporting interactions across text, voice or images while delivering AI-driven, sensory-rich recommendations and comparisons. Leveraging comprehensive AEP insights, Adobe Experience Manager brand experiences and third-party sources, agents such as the Product Advisor Agent will be able to personalize experiences based on user context and brand preferences—anchored in trusted first-party data and brand content for reliability and compliance. As customers interact across a businesses' digital properties, insights on sentiment, behavior and pain points will be captured in AEP, to inform and shape the overall customer experience.

Adobe Brand Concierge will be built to support use cases across both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) teams. B2B teams have unique challenges, and Brand Concierge will address this with Experience Platform agents, such as the Account Qualification Agent, that will operate in sync with sales and marketing teams. For instance, on a brand website, the Brand Concierge will go beyond providing general product information to delivering tailored content based on the existing account relationship, while handling tasks such as booking follow-up meetings. These capabilities will optimize the sales cycle by generating more leads and boosting conversion through more precise personalization.

AI agent partner ecosystem

As teams embrace agentic AI to augment their daily work and drive better results, interoperability amongst AI agents in different ecosystems is critical. Across the applications that marketers lean on to deliver great customer experiences, AI agents must work together effectively and not disrupt the flow of work.

Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator equips businesses with tools to drive multi-agent collaboration, extending the value of agentic AI across more workflows, with customization capabilities that address specific needs. This includes new and continued strategic partnerships with Acxiom, Amazon Web Services, Genesys, IBM, Microsoft, RainFocus, SAP, ServiceNow and Workday that enable seamless execution of use cases across agents for customer service, enterprise resource planning, human resources, collaboration and productivity, and data management. Adobe also announced expanded agency and system integrator partnerships with Accenture, Deloitte Digital, EY and IBM to drive customization across industries and use cases.

Zendesk to Acquire Local Measure, Expanding AI-Powered Voice

Zendesk, a global leader in AI-powered service, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Local Measure, a leading provider of CCaaS and advanced voice solutions and a long-time AWS partner. This acquisition accelerates Zendesk’s expansion into larger, more complex service environments, enhances its AI voice capabilities, and strengthens its integration with Amazon Connect, AWS’s enterprise-ready, AI-powered, cloud contact center solution that helps companies deliver superior customer service at a lower cost.

Tom Eggemeier

“Voice is one of the most personal and powerful ways businesses connect with their customers and employees, and managing it at scale requires a solution that is both intelligent and adaptable,” said Tom Eggemeier, CEO of Zendesk. “By acquiring Local Measure, we are fast-tracking our ability to deliver a fully integrated, AI-powered voice solution that combines the strength of Zendesk’s platform with the flexibility, security, and scalability of Amazon Connect. This move positions Zendesk to lead in the next generation of AI-powered service.”

Local Measure’s technology is built for high-volume, complex service environments. It enables businesses to implement sophisticated call routing, leverage AI-powered automation, unify inbound service and outbound sales and marketing efforts, and provide real-time insights that improve service quality.

Jonathan Barouch, CEO of Local Measure

“We’ve worked closely with Zendesk as a strategic partner, and this next step means faster deployment, lower complexity, and cloud-native innovation making Zendesk a fresh alternative to legacy Contact Center providers,” said Jonathan Barouch, CEO of Local Measure. “Together, we can bring customers the best of both worlds – Zendesk’s industry-leading AI-driven service solutions and Local Measure’s deep expertise in voice technology and contact centers.”

This acquisition also strengthens Zendesk’s collaboration with AWS, reinforcing its position as a key provider of AI-driven service solutions. Local Measure’s deep expertise in voice and CCaaS combined with its seamless integration with the AI capabilities of Amazon Connect, will enable Zendesk to deliver more advanced automation, smarter agent assist tools, and greater flexibility and scalability for companies managing large-scale service operations.

“At AWS, we are focused on helping customers solve complex challenges at scale, and Amazon Connect is a critical part of that because it brings enterprise-ready capabilities that are global and AI native,” said Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of AWS. “We are excited to work with Zendesk and Local Measure to unlock new opportunities for organizations to benefit from Amazon Connect helping them improve customer experience and operate faster, smarter, and more efficiently.”

The proposed acquisition is to be implemented via a scheme of arrangement under Australian law and its closing is subject to the satisfaction of customary conditions precedent in transactions of this type, including Local Measure’s shareholder approval and necessary regulatory and Australian Court approvals. The transaction is currently expected to close in May 2025.

Zendesk powers exceptional service for every person on the planet. As the leader in AI-powered service, we help businesses deliver faster, smarter, and more personal customer and employee experiences. Our platform is purpose-built for service – combining AI agents, automation, and human insight to make every interaction seamless. We design our technology to enhance service, making it more intuitive, responsive, and effective. Easy to use, easy to scale, and designed for immediate impact, Zendesk helps companies strengthen relationships, improve efficiency, and grow. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.

Cisco Announced First, Jointly Developed AI Agent from Its Strategic Partner Mistral AI

First Jointly Developed AI Agent Helps Customers Maximize Cisco Investments and Boosts Productivity

• Powerful Partnership: The first of several AI agents being developed by Cisco with Mistral AI as a strategic technology partner, to help drive Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) move towards an Agentic-AI-Led future.
• AI-Powered Efficiency: The AI Renewals Agent streamlines and enhances the creation process for Cisco’s Renewals team by analyzing data from 50 sources to build custom proposals tied to customer outcomes.
• Strategic On-Premises Deployment: Custom AI model ensures data security, privacy, and compliance, while also enabling performance tuning and cost optimization.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in security and networking, today announced the first, jointly developed AI Agent from its strategic partnership with Mistral AI, one of Europe’s leading providers of AI solutions. The AI Renewals Agent greatly enhances and streamlines the renewal proposal creation process at Cisco by consolidating both structured and unstructured data from over 50 signals and sources and providing real-time sentiment analysis, summarized recommendations, intelligent automation, and personalization, all tied to customer outcomes and key performance indicators (KPIs).

By automating tasks and optimizing workflows, the AI Renewals Agent enables strategic focus and customer engagement, enhancing satisfaction and retention, and driving growth. Built using a custom AI model, the solution operates on-premises, ensuring data security, privacy, and compliance as well as empowering performance tuning and cost optimizations. It is estimated that the AI Renewal Agent could reduce the time spent building a renewal proposal and preparing for a customer engagement by as much as 20%, a figure poised to grow as the AI agent improves based on usage and more workflows are automated.

The new agent is the latest AI innovation for Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) organization and continues to demonstrate how Cisco is delivering against its vision of using AI to make every customer experience personalized, proactive and predictive, and delivering unique outcomes that exceed customers’ expectations.

“Mistral AI is a critical partner for Cisco Customer Experience (CX) as we build towards an Agentic-AI-Led future,” said Liz Centoni, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Experience Officer, Cisco. “In addition to cutting-edge AI technology, Mistral AI shares our mission to put the customer at the center of everything we do. The AI Renewals Agent is an important milestone and the first of many innovative solutions that we’re going to build together. The impact on our teams is also significant as we continue to look at opportunities to simplify and reduce friction in their jobs. By combining our large data set, customer trust and Mistral’s industry-leading technology, we are on our way towards shaping the future of customer and employee engagement.”

“This announcement marks another significant milestone in our strategic partnership with Cisco,” said Arthur Mensch, CEO, Mistral AI. “It demonstrates how GenAI can enhance access to rich and complex information sources, deliver critical value to Cisco’s customers and ecosystem, and save considerable time for all stakeholders involved. This achievement has been made possible thanks to the exceptional talent of Cisco’s engineering teams.”

Zendesk Acquiring Ultimate, An AI-powered Customer Support Automation Platform

Late last week, Zendesk announced that it will acquire Ultimate, a customer support automation platform that uses AI, to provide a more complete AI offering for customer experience (CX). The acquisition is expected to close this month after the customary closing conditions are met.

The acquisition will allow companies to offer customer support using fully autonomous AI agents, workflow automation, or human touch. With this acquisition, Zendesk will be able to provide AI agents that can help resolve customer issues with personalization, speed, and dynamic responsiveness. This acquisition will also allow human agents to focus on building relationships, resolving complex challenges, and applying innovation and creativity to move businesses forward.

The acquisition builds on the launch of Zendesk AI, which was the company's fastest-adopted product in history.
"AI is the future of CX and the next generation of AI agents are not just a tool, but a necessary and fundamental shift in how businesses will engage with their customers,” said Tom Eggemeier, CEO of Zendesk. “With Ultimate, we will help our customers set a new standard, with AI agents giving customers the support they need quickly and effortlessly. This means human agents can focus on what they do best: building relationships, resolving complex challenges, and applying innovation and creativity to move businesses forward.”

“Our mission has always been to help businesses use AI to deliver joyful support experiences. We’ve seen 99 percent of CX organizations who adopt AI shift permanently to a hybrid human and AI agent approach,” said Reetu Kainulainen, CEO and co-founder of Ultimate. “As part of Zendesk, we now have the scale to drive this transformation for every business.”

Ultimate’s AI agents automate up to 80 percent of support requests. They leverage any knowledge source and offer full customization to resolve even the most sophisticated use cases. Its automation platform integrates with any backend system and provides robust analytics and reporting. Together, Zendesk and Ultimate will offer companies the flexibility and control to deliver customer support their way – be it fully autonomous AI agents, workflow automation or human touch.

“In the era of AI, the challenge of delivering exceptional customer service has never been more demanding. It’s not just about streamlining operations or leveraging new technology; it’s about redefining excellence in customer service,” said Kelsey Hales, senior Zendesk lead at Taskrabbit. “With Zendesk and Ultimate, we will not only meet but exceed our customers’ expectations, all while keeping an eye on efficiency and cost-effectiveness.”

“Traditional chatbots are great in meeting basic CX needs. AI agents can be smarter, more reliable and provide precision support,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group. “With Ultimate, Zendesk is well positioned to offer AI agents that can tackle sophisticated and complex service use cases, helping resolve customer issues with personalization, speed and dynamic responsiveness.”

This acquisition builds on the launch of Zendesk AI, the fastest-adopted product in the company’s history. With Zendesk AI, Ultimate and the company’s AI-powered Workforce Engagement Management solutions, Zendesk offers the only complete CX platform that elevates customer experiences, manages service quality and accelerates business growth.

Zendesk To Acquire Klaus, An AI powered CX

Acquisition deepens company’s commitment to leading the future of AI-powered customer experience (CX) with new and transformative quality management capabilities

Zendesk today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Klaus, the industry leading AI-powered quality management platform. AI is driving a rapid increase in customer interactions and radically transforming the world of customer service. Customer service teams are being asked to increase their ROI by managing a rising volume of interactions while providing quality service, and increasing their organization's efficiency in the process. With Klaus, Zendesk customers will be able to deliver consistent, high quality service across every channel and across both human and digital agents (bots) – all while unlocking the power of everyday customer interactions to increase loyalty.

“As AI drives up the speed and frequency of customer engagement, only AI-powered quality assurance (QA) can keep up as companies work to identify and fix gaps in their customer service operations,” said Adrian McDermott, chief technology officer, Zendesk. “The combination of Zendesk AI and Klaus’ capabilities will help businesses navigate greater complexity and volume and ensure both digital and human agents deliver highly personal and empathetic service.”

”Zendesk and Klaus share a vision of AI-led, personalized CX with businesses fully anticipating and acting on their customers’ needs,” said Martin Kõiva, CEO and founder, Klaus. “QA software plays a critical role in this, ensuring consistency, assessing both human and digital agent performance and providing actionable insights for strategic planning. As part of Zendesk, we will continue to build and deliver these crucial capabilities, but now at an even greater scale.”

With digital agents resolving more service inquiries without human interaction, having a QA solution that analyzes both human and digital agent performance is crucial to maintaining quality control and providing best-in-class customer service. While most QA software is capable of only scoring 1 to 2 percent of interactions and cannot recognize systemic trends, Klaus’ AI scores 100 percent of customer support interactions. It pinpoints conversations with positive or negative sentiment, identifies outliers, churn risk, escalations and follow-ups across all conversations – even those done by outsourced teams. Klaus spots knowledge gaps and coaching opportunities that can be used to improve agent performance and productivity, all of which results in higher customer satisfaction.

WEM is a critical capability for today's customer service leaders. The acquisition of Klaus will be the latest addition to the company’s existing workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions which includes Tymeshift, a modern workforce management tool built exclusively for Zendesk. The company acquired Tymeshift in June 2023. The acquisition of Klaus is anticipated to close in the first quarter of 2024 upon receipt of required regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

To learn more about Klaus and the benefits of quality assurance visit Klausapp.com.

About Zendesk

Zendesk is on a mission to simplify the complexity of business and make it easy for companies and customers to create connections. Our customer experience software unlocks the power of billions of interactions, enabling businesses to build rich, meaningful relationships with their customers. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark and today operates in more than 20 countries around the world.

About Klaus

Klaus is an AI-powered quality management platform that helps companies drive revenue through excellent customer service. Headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, Klaus was founded in 2018 by Martin Kõiva, Kair Käsper and Egon Sale and has nearly 100 employees.

Tech Mahindra Launches A New Business Unit Navixus™

Tech Mahindra Launches Navixus™ to Help Customers Increase Productivity and Generate Revenue Through Digital Transformation

New business unit combines strengths of Tech Mahindra and recently acquired, Eventus Solutions Group, enabling customers to navigate digital crossroads

Tech Mahindra, a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting, and business re-engineering solutions, has today announced the launch of a new business unit Navixus™, within Tech Mahindra Business Process Services (BPS). Navixus™ will combine Tech Mahindra’s Business Process Services’ automation, analytics, and consulting with Eventus’ customer experience (CX) and transformation capabilities to offer a holistic digital transformation suit to customers. Eventus is also a Tech Mahindra company.

Navixus™ offers a suite of expanded and enhanced capabilities, including consulting, operational excellence, intelligent automation, generative artificial intelligence, CX technologies. The new business unit will also provide Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), advanced analytics, managed services, and will guide customers from optimization to transformation. According to industry reports, while nine in ten large companies globally have a digital and artificial intelligence transformation underway, they have only captured 31% of the expected revenue lift and one quarter of expected cost savings from the effort. To tackle this, Navixus™ will assist businesses in addressing the challenges arising from heightened customer expectations, omnichannel interactions, budget constraints, and inefficient processes across various industries.

Birendra Sen, Business Head, Business Process Services, Tech Mahindra, said, “Today many enterprises are grappling with the challenges associated with adapting evolving technologies, ensuring robust data security, addressing skill gap, managing complex transformations, and navigating an extremely dynamic marketplace. Navixus™ aims to partner with our customers in this journey through a consulting-led approach and value-accretive suite of offerings that helps them continually deliver superior experiences.”

The new business unit, led by Tech Mahindra’s consulting experts with decades of experience, will offer invaluable insights from global implementations and integration with major CX technology providers. Navixus™ will act as a complete digital transformation suite that caters to a customer’s future goals by unifying every transformative technology and offering, bringing together all capabilities under one roof. This will empower Tech Mahindra’s customers with future ready business capabilities that has a strong emphasis on customer centricity.

Rob Rutledge, Business Unit Head of Navixus™ & CEO, Eventus, said, “The pace of change required for our clients to remain competitive and exceed the increasing demands of their customers has never been greater. Companies need to evolve and automate or be replaced by those who proactively modernize their operations. Navixus™ will provide customers the experience from global implementations and the integration of nearly every major CX technology provider.”

Eventus, a key player in providing comprehensive customer engagement solutions including strategy consulting, cloud-based tools, and managed services, was acquired by Tech Mahindra with the aim of augmenting its consulting-led front office solutions and move up as a valuable BPS partner. Navixus™ aligns with this vision, further enabling Tech Mahindra to deliver industry leading digital-first solutions to its global customers.

About Eventus

At Eventus Solutions Group, we have been reinventing the customer experience. We help enterprise-level companies solve the most complex customer experience (CX) and contact center problems—equipping them with the strategies, technologies, cross-platform analytics, and fresh thinking they need to delight their customers and meet the challenges of today’s new “Age of the Customer.” In fact, when our competitors falter, companies turn to us for creative solutions and clarity. And to connect clients’ bewildering array of operational, contact center and marketing software, we built IntelligenceHub, a unified data and analytics platform. For organizations that want to optimize the way customers interact with your firm, Eventus Solutions Group delivers a better experience every time.

Zendesk Extends Its CX Leadership with Powerful Generative AI Offerings

Company also launches capabilities to further secure data and ensure privacy in the evolving AI landscape

Zendesk, Inc. today announced market-leading customer experience (CX) generative AI advancements that allow companies to realize immediate business value through improved customer satisfaction, reduced costs and increased customer loyalty.

• Zendesk AI: As part of the Zendesk AI solution, companies can now deploy generative AI-powered bots that quickly and seamlessly supply answers to customers. Additionally, agents, admins and managers now have more AI tools to customize and enhance their CX solutions.
• AI for Voice: As part of this next wave of Zendesk AI innovation, agents now have the option to receive AI-generated conversation summaries and transcripts that capture customer sentiment, which increases productivity and reduces costs.
• Advanced Data Privacy and Protection: Available today, businesses now have access to advanced safeguards and controls to manage customer data and ensure that generative AI is safely and securely deployed.

“Constant AI innovation is the new reality for CX leaders. While this promising technology unlocks incredible opportunities, it also adds pressure to deploy rapidly evolving capabilities in a timely manner and deliver meaningful business value,” said Tom Eggemeier, CEO, Zendesk. “Zendesk is the best partner for businesses during this transformative time. We bring a powerful combination of deep CX and AI experience to provide capabilities that allow CX teams to be more efficient and empathetic. This improves customer and employee satisfaction and delivers cost efficiencies and revenue growth.”

New generative AI capabilities create authentic conversations

According to the 2023 Zendesk CX Trends Report, nearly 70% of consumers expect most companies will use generative AI to improve their experiences. The new Zendesk generative AI capabilities enable bots to summarize key information from multiple help center articles for more natural conversations with customers. With these Zendesk AI enhancements, agents can resolve requests faster and more consistently with contextually similar tickets. Additionally, admins can review AI-provided intent suggestions that address gaps in answers as well as adjust bot tone to be more casual or professional to stay consistent with brand persona.

“Our team is very focused on operational efficiency and with Zendesk AI, we implemented AI immediately – without any developer support – while maintaining high-quality, personalized service for our customer base of more than 1.2 million online shoppers,” said Aashley Malsbury, Sr. Operations Manager, Grove Collaborative. “As we implement Zendesk AI across our CX portfolio, there is massive potential to eliminate manual work for agents which allows them to focus on more important tasks that are key to maintaining our 95% CSAT score.”

As part of this release, Zendesk AI is expanding intent detection to additional industries and use cases including Insurance, Travel/Tourism and more. Companies in these industries can now take common intents and edit them for their specific needs such as detecting frequently asked questions by travelers, and escalating to agents who are specially equipped to handle these issues.

Additionally, Zendesk announced AI for Voice which further reduces manual work for agents working on the phone by summarizing the conversation, providing a transcript and identifying customer sentiment. This saves time and allows agents to focus on customer resolutions.

Advanced security and privacy safeguards businesses

As the demand for AI-driven and personalized experiences grows, companies are finding it increasingly important to secure data across the customer journey. As part of Zendesk’s commitment to trust and security, the company provides auditability, encryption, and business resilience as well as a variety of certifications including FedRAMP and ISO certifications, and compliance controls to meet HIPAA and GDPR requirements.

To build on these offerings, Zendesk today launched an Advanced Data Privacy & Protection package. This provides companies with greater control and flexibility over customer data to:

• Safeguard their business with stronger and targeted encryption
• Elevate privacy by specifying what data is shown and kept
• Strengthen security and visibility by logging who accessed and searched for data. 

“AI is revolutionizing the Indian economy, with the potential of adding $450-500 billion to the country’s economy by 2025 according to NASSCOM. Generative AI is particularly gaining traction and its applications for CX are exciting,” said Vasudeva Rao Munnaluri, RVP India & SAARC, Zendesk. “As the demand for more personalized, conversational experiences grows, there’s also the concern for data protection. With the Parliament of India passing the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, businesses are gearing up to adapt to the changes in practices. Zendesk has the right solutions – built on a commitment to trust and security – and deep expertise in CX and AI to help businesses in India be more efficient, empathetic and secure.”

These capabilities will help businesses manage rapidly evolving data requirements accelerated by advances in AI. As the industry continues to evolve, Zendesk is committed to guiding companies through changing regulations and ensuring control and flexibility over how customer data is managed.

“There is a lot of value and power that generative AI and LLMs promise for businesses. However, we must set an example on building CX responsibly and guide our customers to reduce risk,” said Cristina Fonseca, Head of AI, Zendesk. “In line with our security principles and privacy framework, we have built in safeguards and control for companies to set limits for bots. For example, when sensitive information (such as medical history) comes up, an agent must be brought into the customer conversation."

With these enhancements, Zendesk continues to help businesses unlock the power of their customer interactions. Looking ahead, the company is committed to leading the CX industry and accelerating innovation, especially in AI. To hear more about the company’s vision for powerful AI and intelligent CX, visit the Zendesk Newsroom

About Zendesk

Zendesk is on a mission to simplify the complexity of business and make it easy for companies and customers to create connections. Our customer experience software unlocks the power of billions of interactions, enabling businesses to build rich, meaningful relationships with their customers. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark and today operates in more than 20 countries around the world.

92% of Indian business leaders say optimal CX is one that’s immersive: Zendesk study

Zendesk’s 2023 CX Trends Report signals a dramatic shift in expectations, with 89% of Indian business leaders rethinking the entire customer experience

Zendesk, Inc. has released the company’s latest global Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report, revealing immersive experiences are fast becoming a key differentiator for brands to stay competitive and help ensure customers remain loyal. According to the report, 61% of customers globally are excited about experiences that are natural, convenient and fluid. Customers are also expecting more from the brands they do business with, and a vast majority of them (80%) say their customer service standards have increased over the past one year.

“Customers have high expectations, less patience and more options when it comes to who they do business with,” said Adrian McDermott, Chief Technology Officer at Zendesk. “This year, our CX Trends shows that this shift in behavior has prompted leaders to invest in technology that creates an immersive, yet seamless experience. These new standards of customer service are critical to boosting customer acquisition and loyalty, as well as profitability.”

Immersive CX is evolving into the new standard, redefining how companies engage with their customers. This change stems from what people are increasingly demanding of brands today: that they meet them where they are, under their terms, through seamless and engaging interactions. Over the last several years, leaders have recognized how this transformation has required an expanded role of CX, prompting them to make major investments to remain competitive and meet elevated customer expectations.

In fact, 92% of Indian business leaders believe that the optimal customer experience is immersive and integrates naturally into what customers are doing. Roughly three in four of them say CX will be a much more important priority in the next 12 months, to the extent that 79% plan to increase investments into CX technologies in the same time frame.

“Business leaders in India are recognising the power of immersive experiences, particularly during times of economic uncertainty,” said Vasudeva Rao Munnaluri, RVP India & SAARC, Zendesk. “They’re facing a reality where 4 in 5 customers in India will switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences. CX is fast emerging as the key to customer retention, and the good news is that 95% of Indian business leaders who have invested in CX technologies are already seeing a positive return on investment. Amid tighter budgets and rising costs, CX has the potential to put businesses on a strong growth trajectory, making it extremely important to future-proof any organization’s customer base.”

The 2023 Zendesk CX Trends Report consists of data from nearly 3,700 customers and over 4,700 customer service and experience leaders, agents, and technology buyers from 20 countries, as well as Zendesk Benchmark product usage data from nearly 100,000 Zendesk customers worldwide, ranging from small business to enterprises. This year’s key findings highlight that Artificial Intelligence (AI), conversational experiences, personalization, customer well-being and sentiment, and integrated teams are the critical components that businesses need to deliver immersive experiences, which will shape the future of CX.

Customers want (and expect) AI to evolve

Increased investment in AI has not gone unnoticed, and customers are becoming more comfortable with its presence. Of those who interact with customer service bots on a regular basis, 71% of Indian customers say interactions with bots have become more human-like.

As customers enjoy richer experiences with bots, their expectations have also risen – 84% of Indian customers expect AI interactions will become more natural and human-like over time, and the ideal evolution of AI will enable customers to ask increasingly complex questions. In fact, Indian customers expect AI to have the ability to communicate in a conversational way (46%), offer personalized responses to queries (43%), tackle more complex questions (37%) and handle multiple questions (36%).

It’s perhaps why 91% of business leaders in India are interested in learning about how AI is advancing customer experiences and becoming more natural. Currently, only 35% of Indian businesses have invested in AI/bots and 45% plan to invest in it in the next 12 months.

“The importance of AI and automation cannot be overstated. Customers and businesses appreciate the value of AI-driven support. We know that customers want their issues to be resolved within seconds or minutes with 85% of customers in India saying they expect to engage with someone immediately while contacting a company,” said Vasudeva Rao Munnaluri. “And to meet this demand, businesses need to improve their capabilities to ensure AI-driven service is nearly identical to human support. The time to act is now, especially when delivering great CX is a competitive differentiator.”

Conversational experiences empower customers

Customers are driving the rise of conversational experiences. They want fluid, friendly and natural interactions that put them in control and do not interrupt current tasks. For example, if a customer stops an interaction, they expect a new support representative to be able to easily pick up where the conversation last ended. In fact, 80% of customers in India spend more with brands that provide a seamless experience between all points of contact. And yet, less than two-thirds (64%) of businesses have implemented conversational customer service.

While customer expectations could not be clearer, businesses in India have been quick to catch up. Eighty-nine percent of leaders in the country have committed to reimagining customer service and 93% are interested in understanding how customer conversations will be at the center of all customer experiences.

Customers are eager for deeper personalization

According to the trends report, half the customers in India want companies to increase personalization in their wants and needs, whether it is online or in-store.

Unfortunately, most companies hold a narrow view of what personalization means and how to deliver it, with a vast majority of organizations in India playing catch up. Eighty-three percent of business leaders say that their organizations aren’t collecting enough customer data to deliver personalized experiences. This is in direct contrast with what customers expect as 87% of them want businesses to have access to past purchases, context from interactions and other information handy.

If companies deliver personalized experiences, they have the opportunity to reap the benefits of long-lasting customer relationships – 90% of business leaders agree that deeper personalization leads to increased customer retention. Businesses in the country are beginning to recognise how customer service data is a treasure trove of information that can be used to deliver personalized experiences. Ninety-two percent of Indian business leaders say customer service data is valuable and should be leveraged for more personalization. And 78% say they plan on increasing personalization offered to customers.

Customer well-being and sentiment are reshaping CX

Businesses are unprepared when it comes to understanding customer emotions. Organizations have made efforts to improve customer well-being, but 91% of business leaders admit that their approach to dealing with customer emotions has been ad hoc. Companies across the world have not made strides in tracking emotional data in a more formal way. Only 22% of leaders and managers globally say that customer sentiment is used to personalize the experience a customer receives.

A negative experience with a company can cause real, lasting emotional damage and creates critics who will spread the word. In fact, two-thirds (66%) will head to the exit after even one unsatisfactory interaction.

The road ahead for CX

CX leaders have become increasingly aware of the benefits of creating immersive experiences, and recognize that support functions are capable of driving revenue. In fact, 72% of business leaders across the world believe merging teams and responsibilities around CX will increase operational efficiencies, and 64% already have plans in place to do so.

Business leaders in India realize the critical role of CX in business growth – 91% say delivering great customer experience is critical to meeting business goals while 89% say it’s critical to future-proofing their customer bases. It’s possibly why 92% of Indian businesses plan on increasing their CX budgets in the next 12 months.

In 2023, companies in the country are planning on making some bold moves and innovating their customer service offerings with investments towards virtual and augmented reality (51%), the metaverse (42%) and voice assistants (41%).

"As we look ahead, providing excellent customer service will become even more important to build resilience and manage uncertainty,” said McDermott. “The brands that invest in technology to provide a seamless, immersive CX will see a boost in customer acquisition and loyalty, and ultimately profitability.”

Download and read more in the 2023 Zendesk CX Trends Report here.

Methodology

Data in this report comes from one survey of customers, one survey of business respondents, and Zendesk Benchmark product usage data. Zendesk surveyed nearly 3,700 customers and over 4,700 customer service and experience leaders, agents, and technology buyers from 20 countries and organizations ranging from small business to enterprise during July and August 2022. Results from each survey were weighted to remove bias from the survey samples.

Zendesk Benchmark product usage data came from nearly 100,000 Zendesk customers worldwide who participate in the Zendesk Benchmark. Account activity criteria were applied to filter out data from inactive accounts. Zendesk Benchmark data is based on product usage from July 2021 to July 2022.

About Zendesk

Zendesk started the customer experience revolution in 2007 by enabling any business around the world to take their customer service online. Today, Zendesk is the champion of great service everywhere for everyone, and powers billions of conversations, connecting more than 100,000 brands with hundreds of millions of customers over telephony, chat, email, messaging, social channels, communities, review sites and help centers. Zendesk products are built with love to be loved. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark, built and grown in California, and today employs more than 5,000 people across the world. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.

Nilkamal Partners With Haptik To Deliver Seamless Customer Experience Across Platforms

Jio Haptik Technologies Limited, the world’s foremost conversational commerce platform, has joined hands with Nilkamal, the world’s largest manufacturer of molded furniture, to enable a consistent brand experience for its customers on WhatsApp and website.

During the phase-1 launch, Nilkamal’s capabilities will allow it to resolve frequently-asked customer queries and reduce the dependency on support agents, which helps optimize manpower capacity planning.

The Haptik-Nilkamal partnership does not only automate WhatsApp commerce at a granular level but also helps customers track their order status, status of their refund requests, and add product discovery as part of their shopping experience. The bot has been designed to make commerce through conversations a matter of intuition and uses Haptik’s flagship smart skills - Product Discovery, Smart Agent Chat and Feedback to achieve this.

Haptik’s intelligent WhatsApp and website bots enable a smooth brand experience and help personalize the customer experience, which results in customer delight.

Aakrit Vaish, Haptik Co-founder and CEO, said: “The Haptik-Nilkamal partnership brings forth robust solutions driven by our intuitive bots to streamline customer experience, optimize support agent performance and ultimately achieve customer satisfaction. Customer experience, after all, is the name of the game and our solutions help brands like Nilkamal to offer the best CX whose foundation lies in hyper personalization and seamless brand-customer communications.”

Abhishek Pathak, Head of Customer Success at Nilkamal, said: “Thanks to Haptik, Nilkamal has enhanced customer experience by ensuring our customers are able to access round-the- clock support to address their key concerns, track order and refund status, and explore our world-class products. Haptik’s WhatsApp and website chatbots help us drive conversations that feel natural with a human touch to them.”

Product Exploration, Smart Agent Chat and Feedback are the Smart Skills from Haptik that power Nilkamal’s renewed customer experience strategy.

About Haptik

Haptik helps brands acquire, convert, engage and delight users with AI-driven, personalized, conversational experiences across 20 channels and 100+ languages. With the vision of creating the most compelling conversational commerce platform of the 21st century, Haptik’s Conversational Commerce platform enables brands to design delightful experiences that improve conversion rates across every stage of their customer’s journey. Haptik’s leading clients and partners include KFC, Whirlpool, Starhub, HP, Reliance Jio, CEAT, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance among others. The company has been featured as a Category Leader across many platforms including Gartner, G2, Opus Research & more.

What Customer Experience (CX) Technology Trends to Look Out for in 2023

A business can flourish only when it has satisfied customers. The customers are the foundation of any business, and a repeat customer makes a business grow manifold. However, there are times when there will be grievances, feedback, etc., which could be both positive or negative. Gone are the days when people had to depend on the snail mail and wait even longer for a response. Today, most businesses have contact centers where customers can connect through multiple routes concerning the product or service. At this stage, a customer must be left satisfied and happy with the response to spread the good word, thereby enhancing the base.

Thus, it becomes imperative for companies to ensure that the customer experience (CX) is of exceptional quality. According to an analysis by leading research company Forrester, 69% of customers believe that live assistance has the highest satisfaction rate while believing that their questions can be fully answered telephonically. In comparison, 45% of customers in the US would abandon a payment process if they don't get their questions addressed immediately. It is an eye-opener for anybody who undermines an efficient contact center's long-term and short-term effects vis-a-vis customer satisfaction.

Most of us have, at some point or the other, been annoyed by the long wait to connect to agents at a contact center and by the call getting transferred from one agent to another. It is the number one cause of frustration and negative customer experience. Specific queries can be answered by auto answers or voice bots with the help of AI. It leaves the workforce at contact centers to work on bettering the customer experience by appealing to emotional satisfaction and finding innovative solutions, eventually leading to higher customer satisfaction and higher retention. We all know how a positive image of the brand goes a long way in creating brand loyalty.While customers prefer telephonic phone calls, which appeal to them emotionally and help quickly resolve their problems, customers today are open to technology-based resolutions too. In 2022 it is obvious for the customers and contact center agents to stay abreast with technology, and as a matter of fact, Artificial Intelligence is being used to provide unique solutions.

Businesses have an integrated omnichannel communication experience that enables the customers to find answers to their queries without human intervention. Advancements such as voice bots, chatbots, IVR, and call back at convenience have ensured that customers can get their issues resolved intelligently at their convenience. Besides, AI-powered omnichannel conversational bots, which understand the context in case a query is written differently or misspelled, also dominate the trends currently. The rule the roost primarily because personalized experience goes a long way in customer retention and happiness.

While the customer is at the core, one must not forget the agents sitting on the other end and are the foundation of the brand image the company is trying to build. Customized Agent Desktop software, which has all the information like customer history, purchase or service received details, and personal information, amongst others, is the most significant advantage resulting in quick resolution of issues. Better contact center analytics, data analysis, and more connectivity with integration is another step towards ensuring that the agents are empowered with more information to help the customers.

Employee engagement programs that can increase agent retention are equally important because a happy employee leads to a happy company. An agent must provide a personalized experience with excellent communication skills. Though cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence seem to be making their inroads in the contact center industry, the one-on-one communication shall continue, and customers and agents will continue to be the key factors affecting the brand image.


The Above Content is Written By —

Mr. Amit Gandhi Founder NovelVox

Global Low-Code No-Code Conversational AI Driven CX Platform Twixor Goes Live With Its 1st Client

The conversational AI driven customer experience platform widens its global reach

Twixor, the global low-code no-code conversational AI driven customer experience platform, has announced that it is now live for its first client in Melbourne, Australia. The technology start-up, which offers conversational AI and automation capabilities, has widened its global reach now that its product is fully integrated and gone live with a disability support services organisation from Down Under.

The company’s Australian disability support services organisation, with Twixor product integration, is now using WhatsApp for employee workforce engagement and responses. For example, available slots are highlighted for its support workers, who then book these slots as per customer’s requirement over the same channel. This was achieved through secure integration with existing RPA systems and back-end reservation systems via APIs.

With Twixor integration, the disability support services organisation is set to reap some significant benefits. The instant conversational facility via WhatsApp reduces the communication back and forth vis-à-vis email, leading to immediate and desired slot filling. This makes for low or minimal friction in communication via an inexpensive 24x7 channel (in contrast to a voice call centre).

Twixor enables AI-powered conversational capabilities for its clients across numerous verticals. Most of the company’s clients choose the popular messaging app WhatsApp as their preferred channel for last mile-communication, but the platform works equally well with any other customer-preferred social messaging channels also.

Commenting on the occasion, Ashok Anand, Founder & CEO, Twixor said, “We are happy to announce that our first partnership in Australia is now live and delivering. Ours is a paperless digital vision with an aim to reduce frictions and bridge the gaps in communication for our clients to impact their bottom line positively. At Twixor, we have planned to introduce many more digital and messaging-led use cases in healthcare covering all stakeholders, including customers, patients, doctors, nurses, and other support workers.”

Give Your Business a Transformation with the Help of Zoho Consulting Partners

Zoho consulting partners will boost customer satisfaction with the identification of the appropriate set of Zoho tools for addressing the different requirements of each business. They are qualified experts who will provide a terrific customer experience and also deliver excellent implementation, support services, and sales. As authorized Zoho consulting partners, they are the best development team and with experience in Zoho implementation, development, and integrations in various industrial sectors.

How will Zoho Consulting Partners Help Businesses?

• Zoho consulting partners will closely work with a variety of Zoho tools for providing the clients with an effective business management system.
• They are able to utilize all the tools and resources of the developer for getting the best solution for the business.
• They will customize Zoho solutions such as Zoho products or even other products for the management of finance, IT, human resources, marketing, sales, and business intelligence to match the processes of the business.
• Zoho solutions also provide mobile as well as web-based applications to give businesses access to crucial data.
• Zoho consulting partners have a good understanding of the business operations as well as customer requirements to make a plan for integrating Zoho's products.
• They offer implementation which will suit the business processes and customers' requirements and help in increasing the business productivity.
• Zoho consulting partners will also provide training for customers to get the most business value with Zoho solutions.

Services Provided by Zoho Consulting Partners

• Zoho Consulting - As certified Zoho consulting partners, they will provide the best solutions to take the business to the next level.
• Zoho Implementation - Experienced and certified Zoho partners will make sure the organization has an error-free solution with the help of quality checks as well as testing for effective implementation of the solution.
• Zoho Development - They develop customizations to suit the business workflow effectively for reducing the turnaround time and attaining profitable growth in the business.
• Zoho Training - Zoho Partners will provide the necessary training to the employees so that they are familiar with the solution.
• Zoho Integration – They will integrate third-party applications with smooth data migration from the existing applications to the new Zoho solutions very efficiently.
• Zoho Support and Maintenance – The Zoho consulting partners will make sure the delivery is error-free and ensures user satisfaction as they are well equipped for handling the Zoho customizations as well as integrations very efficiently.

Integration of Zoho WhatsApp

Through the Zoho and WhatsApp integration, organizations are able to directly send and receive a number of WhatsApp messages from the CRM tool. Also, the Zoho CRM tool will enable the business to manage all the WhatsApp messages even with no official WhatsApp number.

There is also the ‘WhatsApp History’ module in the Zoho CRM tool that will provide a complete history of all the incoming and outgoing messages that will be useful in the CRM report generation. For improvement in the interactions with the customers, a brand chatbot can also be created with the help of the Zoho WhatsApp chatbot function.

Users may use the Zoho-WhatsApp API for enabling the Zoho Whatsapp integration even without an active WhatsApp number. For the application of the WhatsApp Business API, the following details of the business will be required -

• Business manager ID verified on the Facebook account
• Business mobile number (with no WhatsApp app)
• Business Name that has to be displayed

Get a WhatsApp business account approved in two to five days.

 
Enabling the WhatsApp business account API with Zoho CRM

• Installing the WhatsApp Web tool as a Chrome extension is the first step.
• Launching the Zoho CRM tool on the computer and clicking on the WhatsApp Web menu option.
• Go to the Configure Settings tab and choose the Outgoing Messages tab for sending the WhatsApp messages from Zoho CRM.
• Go to the Leads option in Zoho CRM, and select the Send Bulk WhatsApp button for sending the bulk WhatsApp messages from any kind of CRM module.

Users can also use Create functionality for creating the display and action.

Takeaway

Zoho analytics is an excellent business intelligence tool that will enable the organization to prepare dashboards, and reports and transform its data for making strategic decisions. Zoho analytics will help to find valuable insights from the business data. It uses the AI and ML-based analytics to get effective and fast results from the large amounts of data.

Tata CLiQ Collaborates with Salesforce to Redefine Customer Experience

A unified customer view is enabling Tata CLiQ to deliver optimal experiences at every customer touchpoint

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced that Tata CLiQ has leveraged Salesforce Service Cloud, to deliver the right experiences across multiple channels to consumers with contextual, proactive and personalized interactions.

Tata CLiQ aspires to be a leading e-commerce company, offering its customers best in class service for timely deliveries, hassle free returns and more. PwC has been a key partner in the implementation process enabling end-to-end deployment transforming the service experience for Tata CLiQ providing a holistic view of customer information seamlessly.

Tata CLiQ also implemented the Visual Remote Assistant (VRA) which allows the company to deliver the same exceptional support they would deliver in-person, visual guidance, often in real-time. This solution is browser based, allowing employees to seamlessly connect with customers on a live remote support to capture correct images for the return scenarios.

Since implementing Salesforce, service agents have a unified view of the customer which has delivered efficiency with intelligent dashboards and reports assisting teams with data driven decision making. According to Tata CLiQ, agent experience has improved by 30% with the Single Source of Truth. An 8% reduction in Average Handling Time by the resolutions team, improving first time resolution rate by 15%.

Shweta Srivastava, Director - CS and Customer Experience, Tata CLiQ, said, “Customer-centricity is at the heart of everything we do at Tata CLiQ. Salesforce is aligned to our two-pronged functional vision and strategy of delivering best in class customer and advisor experience, thereby ensuring efficient processes, empowered agents, and superior business outcomes.”

Arun Kumar Parameswaran, SVP and Managing Director - Sales & Distribution, Salesforce India, said, “We are thrilled to be a technology enabler and advisor to Tata CLiQ as they further their vision of becoming a leading e-commerce company fueled by growth and personalized experiences.”

Anjumara Syed, Partner, PwC India Salesforce Leader, said, “PwC has played an integral part in designing and implementing a fully integrated, unified Salesforce platform for Tata CLiQ service agents - continuously delivering customer satisfaction and improving agent productivity.”

About Salesforce

Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies of every size and industry to digitally transform and create a 360° view of their customers. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

About Tata CLiQ

Tata CLiQ is the flagship digital commerce initiative of the Tata Group. It is a multi-category e-commerce platform operating in categories such as electronics, fashion, jewellery, home, beauty, and luxury. Tata CLiQ has a unique omnichannel marketplace model offering customers the convenience of quicker delivery (by shipping from store), easy pick-up, exchange, and returns across 1200+ brands and 1000 stores in 100+ Indian cities and towns. With an obsession for providing customers with a best-in-class shopping experience, we believe in careful brand curation as well as developing and implementing technologies to improve the online experience.

Rezo.AI Launches New Game Changing Offering Designed to Fuel Sales, Marketing, and Support Activities for B2C Businesses

Rezo.AI launches a game changer for Enterprises fueling Sales, Marketing and Support teams to boost revenue growth

Rezo.ai, an AI-powered CX Cloud for enterprises that are transforming customer experience, improving agent productivity, and operationalizing real-time intelligence, today announced the launch of its new offering designed to fuel sales, marketing, and support activities for B2C businesses.

In a highly competitive sales landscape, Rezo.ai carves out a path for businesses to increase top lines, improve agent productivity, and delight every customer. Rezo.ai allows businesses to review 100% of customer interactions, tapping into every customer agent interaction from first contact to resolution. This enables bringing transparency to enterprises, allowing them to understand how consumers are feeling and their major pain points while amplifying their best agent’s capability across the organization.

Fueling sales is powered through Rezo by enforcing script adoption, conversational flow adherence, and protocol compliance, and gaining critical real-time insights into situational factors that may bring down the sales. Real-time insights are consumed by Rezo to assist agents with course correction and provide prompts and suggestive scripts for quick closures/upsell/cross-sell.

So far, the solution has analysed over 21 million minutes in over 30+ languages across multiple channels which is a strong testimony to the interest expressed by enterprises across industries – including insurance, financial services, automobile, and telecom.

Speaking about the impact on businesses, Dr. Rashi Gupta, Chief Data Scientist & Co-Founder, Rezo.AI, said, "Rezo enables enterprises with data packed insights for long term business growth. Our focus is to empower teams to understand their customer behaviour, build personas that can be leveraged to boost sales. Our AI engine also proposes prompts, next best action and ensure enhanced customer experience (CX). In addition, we focus on empowering sales team to understand their customers better, ask right questions and tap on opportunities for 100% conversions.

About Rezo.ai

Rezo.ai is India’s fastest evolving AI-powered CX Cloud for enterprises, transforming businesses with its turnkey services for quick scalability and better economics.

Founded in 2017 by an IITian couple - Manish and Rashi Gupta, Rezo.ai is powered by Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Predictive Intelligence, and other proprietary algorithms. With Rezo.ai, businesses can look at strengthening their contact center capabilities and scaling without worrying about customer experience (CX).

Rezo is helping organizations transform traditional contact centers into modern AI-powered contact centers. AI-powered contact centers enable automated interactions across multiple channels – email, chat, voice, and social and support 100+ languages. Rezo also helps analyse customer–agent interactions, coach and train agents and enhance the customer experience with in-built RPA.

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85% of Indian Customers Are Willing to Switch Brands After One Bad Experience: Zendesk Study

84% of Indian Consumers Feel Like Service Is An Afterthought: Zendesk Study

Annual Zendesk Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report highlights CX as an imperative for growth

88% of indian Companies See A Direct Link Between Customer Service and Business Performance

Zendesk’s landmark annual research has highlighted the potential for businesses to drive business success with a focus on customer experiences as 94% of Indian consumers report making purchase decisions based on the quality of customer service they receive. The global Zendesk (NYSE: ZEN) Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report 2022 shows that a majority of Indian businesses surveyed (88%) agree that there is a direct link between customer service and business performance. Despite this, many Indian consumers (84%) feel like customer service is an afterthought for businesses, indicating a gap between consumer expectation and company actions.

Customer expectations grew over the past year as 88% of Indian consumers say their customer service standards have increased over the last 12 months. CX is a determining factor for retention and loyalty as 85% of Indian customers are willing to switch brands after one bad experience. Indian businesses recognize the need for having a standout customer service team, with 61% saying that it has an impact on retention. It is perhaps why 65% of Indian companies expect funding for their customer service teams to rise by 25% in the next 12 months.

“Businesses cannot afford to take a transactional approach to their relationships with their customers. Customer service is now a key differentiator, but this year’s report reveals some gaps exist between expectation and delivery,” said Adrian McDermott, Chief Technology Officer, Zendesk. “Customers are noticing this gap and voting with their business - and that’s perhaps the clearest signal to businesses that change needs to happen, and fast.”

“Businesses need an institution-wide shift where investments into tools and processes that enhance CX become a priority. The insights are clear on the competitive advantage and scalability that Indian businesses can achieve through these investments. All that’s required now is for businesses to take action on these insights to unlock the returns that positive customer experiences can deliver,” said Vasudeva Rao Munnaluri, Regional Vice President India & SAARC, Zendesk.

The report draws on input from customers, agents, customer service leaders, and business leaders from across 21 countries. Data was also gathered from more than 97,500 Zendesk customers who participated in the company’s Benchmark program. As customers call out increased expectations and the readiness to switch after just one bad experience, the need to close the gap between these expectations and the customer experience delivered has never been more urgent. The opportunity cost for many is nothing short of revenue loss and missed opportunities for growth.

Details of the study are as follows -

Consistent Truths - Customer Service Can Drive Growth

A majority of Indian businesses surveyed (88%) see a direct link between customer service and business performance compared to their counterparts in Korea (57.7%), Japan (59%), Singapore (66%) and Australia (76%). Most businesses in India (85%) estimate that customer service has a positive impact on business growth. The opportunity is not simply to deliver a single solution-based interaction with the consumer, but to use that point of engagement as an opportunity to deepen the relationship. Customer engagement is up 14% globally from the previous year, with 69% of Indian companies saying that it presented more opportunities for cross-selling.

This cuts both ways though, and the insights reveal that customer expectations can drive or stifle growth plans. As consumers spend more online, a majority say that their customer service expectations have increased in the past year. Channels play a big part in meeting these increased expectations and particularly, being where the customer is. However almost half the companies surveyed did not have a strategic plan for customer service over the immediate to medium term.

Key insights:

• 94% of Indian consumers say a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make another purchase
• 99% of consumers are willing to spend more money on businesses that offer personalized and streamlined experiences
• 73% of Indian companies report having a three-year strategic plan for customer service
• 98% of Indian consumers say they are willing to spend more to buy from companies that offer them the chance to find the answers they need themselves
• Nearly half of Indian companies (46%) view CX as a revenue-generating engine for growth, while only 28% view CX as a cost centre.

The Agent X Factor

Increased expectations leads to increased pressure on agents, who act as the front line. In fact the research found that 90% of Indian organizations agree that customer service agents are essential to retaining customers.

When it comes to resolving issues, almost half the consumers surveyed worldwide are looking for agents who are helpful and empathetic. And customers will parlay this goodwill in a positive experience to being open to recommendations from service agents. Many businesses, though, have yet to recalibrate their view of customer service as a cost center. This has meant that investments in optimizing the function have not kept pace with growth, let alone with increasing customer expectations. So while a majority of businesses acknowledge customer service agents as being pivotal to driving sales, a very small number of those same agents are extremely satisfied with their workloads.

• Nearly half of consumers say that helpful and empathetic agents are what matters most when they want to resolve a customer service issue.
• 73% of APAC consumers are open to product recommendations from service agents.
• On the other hand, only 59.7% of agents in India are extremely satisfied with their workloads.

Agent empowerment is a clear focus area for 2022, as agent burnout continues to be a challenge. Nearly half (49%) of agents in India are extremely satisfied with the quality of training they receive compared to agents in Australia (10%), Japan (2.5%), Singapore (12%) and Korea (12.2%). Pair this with the fact that 89% of customers in India, 50% in Australia, 46% in Japan, 69% in Singapore and 37% in Korea feel that businesses need to improve agent training, and you have the first case for investing in what agents need. These also include better performance metrics, clear advancement opportunities and, fundamentally, more respect.

Key insights:

• 48% of Indian company leaders expect an increase in the amount of training offered to agents by a great extent
• 69% of Indian businesses expect to focus training their agents in providing service across multiple channels
• 68% of Indian companies plan to develop flexible work team to resolve specialized problems

Closing Gaps and Mapping Paths To Growth

Eight in ten Indian businesses view customer service as a critical business priority and only 29.5% report that it’s not owned by the C-suite. Indian businesses fared better in identifying customer service as a board-level priority compared to companies in Australia (44.9%), Japan (55.3%), Singapore (40.3%) and Korea (54.9%), where it is not owned by the C-suite. 

While the insights clearly indicate a business case for investments in customer experience, this isn’t necessarily being followed through with executive sponsorship or the right tools or programs, such as training for agents. Alongside this is the need for customer service metrics to be mission critical and reviewed with the appropriate frequency and gravitas. 60% of leaders say ROI has been positive over the past 12 months. However, only 23% strongly agree that customer service spending has kept pace with company growth.

The future hinges on AI and Conversational Experiences

Customers want on-demand service that's available when they need it. 100% of Indian customers surveyed say they are willing to spend money on businesses that offer them the freedom to communicate over whatever channel they choose and don’t want to waste valuable time getting agents up to speed on their order or issue.

Key insights:

• 90% of Indian customers expect AI to save time when contacting a company
• 88% of Indian customers expect AI to keep them from having to repeat themselves after contacting a company for support
• 87% of Indian customers expect a majority of customer service interactions to be automated at the same time increase the quality of service

This means that businesses looking to drive and sustain growth—both now and in the future—need to focus on two emerging customer service capabilities: artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, and conversational customer service. More than half (56%) of Indian business plan to speed up adoption of AI in customer service, while 43% have already implemented conversational customer service and 38% plan to implement it in the future.

"The business case for customer service is clearer than ever and getting buy-in from the top is a critical first step. Getting this engagement relies on evolving the key metrics - look beyond CSAT and identify the broader business impact that can tell a compelling story,” McDermott adds. “This year’s findings bring into sharp focus the need for there to be a more concerted effort across the organization - including better integration of systems and a regular review of metrics. In short, let the insights lead you.”

Zendesk’s customers in India include ITC Foods, Ola, 1MG, DevFactory, Dream11, Slice, Magicbricks.com, etc. For more information, download the report, CX Trends 2022 here

Access the interactive report here

Methodology

Zendesk’s 2022 CX Trends Report surveyed more than 3,511 consumers and 4,670 customer service leaders, agents and technology buyers from 21 countries and organizations ranging from small business to enterprise during July and August 2021. Results from each survey were weighted to remove bias from the survey samples.

Zendesk Benchmark product usage data came from over 97,500 Zendesk customers worldwide who participate in the Zendesk Benchmark. Zendesk Benchmark data is based on product usage from July 2020 to July 2021.

About Zendesk

Zendesk started the customer experience revolution in 2007 by enabling any business around the world to take their customer service online. Today, Zendesk is the champion of great service everywhere for everyone, and powers billions of conversations, connecting more than 100,000 brands with hundreds of millions of customers over telephony, chat, email, messaging, social channels, communities, review sites and help centers. Zendesk products are built with love to be loved. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark, built and grown in California, taken public in New York City, and today employs more than 5,000 people across the world. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.

[All Graphical and Chart Images taken from report here]