Does your organization operate multiple IT service desk tools? Perhaps as a result of merger and acquisition activity. Perhaps because different IT teams have made their own decisions about what best suits their needs.

Customer service teams are often taken for granted. Some of you may think that that is a strong statement. But, if you look up the expression “to be taken for granted”, an idiom within the English language, you will find that it means: OR Given those definitions, I think it is fair to say that many organizations and their employees take the work that customer service teams do for granted. This is not because they don’t care.

Building customer relationships is a critical part of growing a business. It’s not enough to simply start a company and treat each customer as if they’re just another business transaction. You have to engage with your customers, get to know them, and understand their needs. Spending time connecting with your customers is an investment, but by doing so, your customers will be happier and feel more connected to your brand, and your business will reap the benefits.

Freshly picked with care—new Zendesk app integrations are here. Learn how these new integrations can ease workloads for your sales and support teams.

Longtime customers are the lifeblood of a business. According to Marketing Metrics, you are 14 times more likely to sell to an existing customer than you are to attract a new one. What’s more, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than simply investing in retaining one you already have. Upselling to existing customers is essential to growth.

None of us likes being judged unfairly, and that’s especially true in the workplace. When it happens in our jobs, we are instantly transported back to the indignation we might’ve felt in the school playground. Usually, a ‘stolen’ stapler magically re-appears, a ‘missing’ report turns up, or the culprit who finished the biscuit barrel owns up to the heinous crime.

The pressure is on as a sales professional. You must keep up with constant changes in buyer behavior while connecting with potential customers, nurturing leads, and closing deals—all in hopes of hitting your sales targets. Handling so many tasks at once certainly isn’t easy, but you can thrive with the right set of sales skills and qualities in your arsenal. If you want to learn how to be a better sales rep, start by mastering these essential selling skills.

Are you leveraging technical account management software to fast-track technical support requests and increase customer satisfaction? To retain customers, your team must focus on providing technical support and guidance to ensure customer success. Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by between 25% and 95%.

In many ways, the pandemic has forced sales teams to become more efficient. Many teams have switched to a digital-first approach, which allows for more interactions on a daily basis. It also means spending less time and money on commuting and traveling. However, remote sales teams have a bigger hurdle when it comes to forging genuine human connections—and not just between sales representatives and customers, but also between one another.

Yesterday, Freshworks reached an important milestone on our journey to deliver modern, intuitive, and delightful products to customers worldwide. We officially became a public company, trading as FRSH on Nasdaq. This was possible because of the dedication and commitment of our employees, customers, partners, and investors to a company that started 11 years ago with a small idea for a ‘fresh’ helpdesk. Now we have a family of products servicing over 52,000 customers.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) was on the rise for many companies prior to COVID-19. According to ProfitWell, CAC for businesses increased by approximately 60 percent between 2014 and 2019. But since the onset of COVID-19, brands have actually been acquiring new customers more cost-effectively. McKinsey & Company reports that the shift to digital sales led to 30 percent higher acquisition efficiency for businesses.

Delight in customer experience has high standards. Fast-paced consumers want brands to value their time and expect their needs to be met on time, no matter how they get in touch with the brand. Our recent research spanning different countries points to how 52% of consumers expect a quick resolution from companies. First call resolution is a vital contact center metric that monitors such timely support and tracks the number of customer issues resolved within the first support call.

Remote sales have become increasingly common, but it took a pandemic to truly establish virtual selling as the new normal. A McKinsey survey conducted in the wake of Covid-19 found that over 75 percent of buyers and sellers alike now prefer virtual sales meetings over face-to-face interactions. And just 20 percent of B2B buyers said they wanted to go back to in-person presentations of the past. This would seem to be the evolution of the classic “road warrior” salesperson.

Did you know that over 63% of customer service leaders globally have seen an increase in customer expectations? While 64% of consumers say that they expect companies to respond to them in real-time, approximately 72% of customers expect representatives to know their issue and order history. That’s why you need to enable seamless omnichannel customer service or multi-channel support, making it easy for your customers to reach you whenever and wherever they need you.

Digital customer experiences are critical for surviving in a connected world. According to a survey of C-suite executives, more than 70% of CIOs increased investments heading into 2021 to improve customer experience. At an increasing rate, restaurants have adopted app delivery services, fitness memberships pivoted to virtual exercise experiences, retail now rely heavily on e-commerce, and office work accelerated business services like Zoom, Slack, and DocuSign.

“Call centers have never been more important — or more strapped1.” Imagine having a 100-year old parent who has a panic button for emergency situations. When you try it out, it takes an agent five minutes to call to check in. Why the delay in what could have been a life-or-death situation? A shortage of agents. A problem brought about by the pandemic2. This medical alert company is not alone.

The COVID-19 crisis has pushed us all out of our comfort zones – both merchants and consumers. What might have evolved over a decade happened within eight weeks in 2020, when retailers quickly launched e-commerce websites and figured their way through digital payment, order fulfillment, and warehouse management processes. Consumers got equally adventurous too.

Contrary to what you might expect, potential clients are often receptive to cold calls. A study by Rain Group found that 82% of buyers are open to booking meetings when sales reps reach out. Nevertheless, cold-calling and discovery calls can be terrifying for many sales reps. You’re trying to sell a new prospect on a product they know little or nothing about.

Zendesk continues to strive to be an empathetic, active and responsible corporate citizen. As a company that builds software to improve customer relationships, we take a service-first approach when it comes to all our stakeholders: our customers, our employees, our partners and our communities. With that in mind, we are releasing our second Global Impact Report, and like a product release, we aim to do better every time.

Are you ready to elevate your CX? We have an easy way for you to experience the award-winning Vivantio platform with no obligation, no phone calls and no email. Discover the Vivantio difference at your own pace and get ready to elevate your customer experience.

There’s nothing more frustrating than making a purchase and discovering you don’t know how to use the item you just bought. The situation can be equally upsetting for the business selling a product or service. If a customer doesn’t know how to use it, they won’t see its value—a recipe for churn. This is why customer tutorials are a valuable tool in your company's mix of marketing and customer support content.

When you work in a high-stress role where conversations are difficult, and work is seemingly endless, you need a dependable source of comic relief to unwind. In this internet-driven world, only one thing comes to mind: memes. A meme has the power to lighten the mood, bring a humorous perspective to tough situations, and dare we say – unite people. At the end of the day, it works best as an expression of opinion that people can relate to and laugh about.

Customer service tracking software helps organizations collect, manage, and respond to customer support requests. Customer support tools can also gather tickets from various communication channels like emails and phone calls and organize them on a single platform. But with so many customer support tools out there, which one should you pick? Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

In this post, we’re covering everything you need to know about customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, including: For your business to survive and thrive, measuring customer satisfaction is key. You need to take frequent pulses on how your customers feel about your brand, products, services and interactions to identify pain points and benchmark your performance over time.

Customer service jobs can be tough during normal times, but the pandemic has made things even harder. Over the past year, customer support agents have been dutifully fielding a sky-high number of queries from customers worried about canceled flights, ambiguous insurance conditions, delayed packages, and other urgent and emotionally-loaded issues. Customer engagement has reached record highs all while service representatives have been adjusting to longer hours, new technologies, and remote work.

Nearly 70% of consumers expect live chat support and it’s currently the preferred channel for consumers between 18-49 years old1. Over the last few years, live chat has emerged as a must have customer communication channel for sales and support. To help companies meet customers on their preferred channels, we’ve launched a new, highly customizable chat widget which can be easily deployed.

In this episode of the Vivantio Vibe podcast, we share with you 10 ways to align your teams and garner support from the boardroom for optimizing your service management platform. Whether you're a C-level leader looking to rally your teams to investigate and adopt state-of-the-industry methods, or a CS/CX manager who needs to win support and resources from the boardroom, it's essential to have a strategy for communicating your vision and advocating for the action and resources required for success.

Online sports gambling is a booming business. But as upstarts break into the market to try and steal market share from more established players, it’s not the platform or user interface that’s going to determine who is the winner in this multi-billion dollar market. It’s the customer experience. Can AI help sports betting companies take home the biggest payout – loyalty?