Zendesk Announces New Platform and Solutions

19 Nov 2018

During Zendesk Relate 2018, Zendesk made several major announcements: the launch of Sunshine, a partnership with Amazon Web Services, and the launch of a new sales force automation tool.

The first announcement was the release of Sunshine, a new customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Zendesk Sunshine is built entirely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the public cloud, and is meant to be open and flexible. It’s designed to let businesses access and understand all their customer data, while enabling developers to build and deploy customer apps at improved speeds.

At its launch, Zendesk Sunshine offers capabilities such as Profiles, Events, and Custom Objects, which can be used to connect and store customer data. This helps provide a complete picture of the customer as well as a model of the customer relationship, so as to improve customer relationship management.

Zendesk plans to release more solutions using Amazon Web Services, and Sunshine will connect with multiple AWS services, such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon Simple Storage Service. Additionally, the company announced an enhanced go-to-market offering that integrates Amazon Connect, which is currently available on the Zendesk Marketplace and AWS Solution Space.

Similarly, Zendesk has announced the general availability of Explore, its data analytics tool. This helps companies view and analyze data across all Zendesk support channels, providing a single view of the customer over all the teams and channels they’ve interacted with.

Additionally, Zendesk launched Zendesk Sell, a new sales force automation (SFA) tool. Zendesk Sell is built based off the company’s acquisition of FutureSimple Inc., and is intended to enhance the productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility of sales teams. It includes new core SFA capabilities, such as simplified collaboration through at-mentions and customizable performance dashboards.

Sell also comes with a new integration for Zendesk Support, so as to provide agents with more context from the sales process and helping them identify sales opportunities from support conversations.

According to Blair Pleasant, President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion, “There’s a lot of overlap in terms of customer support, sales, and marketing technologies and applications, and it’s no surprise that Zendesk branched out to the sales arena. The new Sunshine platform and tools like Zendesk Sell and Zendesk Explore should make it easier for businesses to gain better insights about their customers and be more effective in service and sales.”

For more information on Zendesk Sunshine, Sell, and its AWS integrations, visit www.zendesk.com.

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