Sunshine Conversations data platform introduces effective and consistent conversational interfaces across existing and emerging customer contact channels

Based on its recent analysis of the North American omnichannel digital customer engagement market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes San Francisco-based Zendesk with the 2020 North American Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership award. One of the earliest providers of customer relationship management (CRM) tools, Zendesk has evolved into a premier provider of customer service and engagement solutions. Its visionary innovation in messaging and other interaction channels, strong partnerships, and solid roadmap bolster its provision of seamless customer journeys that improve the customer experience (CX).

“The company continuously refines its portfolio by creating new solutions as well as by adding third-party applications through rich application programming interfaces (APIs),” said Nancy Jamison, senior research director, ICT. “To extend its market advantage, Zendesk launched its next-generation customer engagement platform, Zendesk Sunshine. This open, flexible CRM platform built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps businesses connect and understand customer data to build next-generation customer experiences.  In a move to refine its strategy further, the company leapfrogged development by approaching Smooch, a provider of omnichannel digital engagement. With Smooch becoming a part of the Zendesk family in 2019, the platform was rebranded as Sunshine Conversations.”

Smooch’s first product was in-app messaging, which allows mobile app developers to integrate a chat or messaging experience directly into their app, thereby providing users with mobile-friendly customer and product support without needing to leave the app. The second part of Smooch’s mission was to unify conversations across consumer channels and within the enterprise. Previously, those conversations had required two separate systems and platforms with two different bots. With Zendesk, the combination of Sunshine and Sunshine Conversations enables businesses to de-silo marketing, service, and sales to access a single view of the customer and shared conversation across platforms.

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In a truly omnichannel landscape, smoothly integrating data across touchpoints and customer journeys and then surfacing that data to supervisors, agents, and other stakeholders will significantly impact both the customer and the employee experience (EX). In addition, the platform automates rich message translation across channels, thereby normalizing message content and optimizing the representation of that message for each channel, including support for conversational commerce.

“With the adoption of the rebranded Sunshine Conversations platform, Zendesk’s omnichannel service delivery and conversational business engagement story have been strengthened,” noted Jamison. “It is a testament to the strength of the platform that leaders in customer contact, which are firmly committed to investing in areas such as AI, natural language interfaces, and other technologies, have chosen Sunshine Conversations to enhance their product portfolios. As solution providers continue embracing these technologies to improve the CX and deliver on omnichannel customer contact, Zendesk’s solutions will continue to grow in prominence.”

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Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has leveraged competitive intelligence to successfully execute a strategy that results in stronger market share, competitive brand positioning, and customer satisfaction.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

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