Nobody likes losing customers. And for many businesses that made the shift to operating online during the pandemic, it’s been a challenge to connect with customers on a personal level. We’ve learned that the tools we use to connect can either hinder or help us. Fortunately, there’s a wide range of digital platforms that can help you understand your customers in a deeper and more meaningful way.

Giving thanks for new Zendesk app integrations. Learn all about how these integrations can help out your sales and support teams.

With concerns about a worldwide recession, it’s no surprise that shoppers are in a bit of a slump. But there’s some encouraging news: consumers across the globe are estimated to spend.301 trillion more on retail goods in 2022 over the previous year and digital spending is expected to total.717 billion worldwide. “Consumer staying power may be waning but it's showing few signs of breaking”, Tim Quinlan, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, told Reuters.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—the holiday season is finally here. After the chaos and uncertainty of the past few years, with supply chain woes, staffing shortages, and inflationary pressures, there is some good news for the retail industry. The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts that holiday sales will be healthy this year.

Data security is no longer just a nice-to-have for messaging and live chat. Data breaches are becoming common, and in an environment where mindfulness about privacy is at an all-time high, businesses risk serious damage if they fail to keep up. This privacy focus also arrives at a time when customer demands for immediacy are also peaking. Live chat solutions are designed to provide fast communications, but can they also do it while securing business and customer privacy? It seems like an oxymoron.

There’s a ton of data that is created with every support request serviced in your help desk. Every ticket comes with its set of vital time-based metrics, ticket tags, and customer ratings. When you multiply that by the average number of tickets your business receives on a daily basis, what you have is a treasure trove of insights hidden within your help desk system.

Customer experience has become a critical differentiator for companies looking to stand out from the crowd. In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business landscape, quality customer experience has become even more important. Customers have more choices and higher expectations than ever before. They want convenience, personalized service, and seamless interactions across multiple channels and touchpoints.

High inflation, talent scarcity, and supply chain challenges are all merging together to create what we refer to as “the triple squeeze.” In short, it’s a tough market out there, and CFOs are feeling the pressure – as per Gartner, 47% find it difficult to find and hire enterprise talent, 50% still see a significant wave of workforce resignations, while 48% believe that supply chain volatility and shortages will last beyond 2022.

Support demand is rapidly and continuously increasing and few businesses are prepared to address the rising needs of their customers. According to TeamSupport’s State of Support report for 2022, overall support demand is rising at an average rate of 11%. That means your support team is getting more emails, more requests, more everything. Chances are that your support team is already getting hammered by the sheer volume of customer issues, not to mention the potential for complexity.

Current headlines predict a global recession on almost a daily basis, leaving us to wonder whether and when it will finally arrive – and if it does, how deep the recession will be and how long it will last. It’s unsettling but we’re no strangers to uncertainty. If anything, we’ve learned over the past few years that we should both expect and prepare for change. After all, many things are still in a state of flux.

CEOs are getting nervous. According to a quarterly survey of business leaders conducted by the Conference Board, 98% of US-based CEOs say they are preparing for an economic recession over the next 12 to 18 months. European leaders are even more fearful – 99% believe a recession is imminent. “CEOs are now preparing for near-inevitable recessions in both the US and Europe”, Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Vice Chairman of the Business Council and Trustee of the Conference Board said.

Interest rates are rising, the housing market is slowing and according to the Consumer Price Index report released on 12 October, inflation is increasing at the fastest rate in 40 years in the US. Prices for everything excluding food and energy climbed 6.6% over the year up to the end of September. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and rising energy costs, the economic picture across the world is just a bleak.

The concept (if not yet the realization) of a single view into the enterprise has existed for some time. In the realm of ITSM, thought-leaders at AXELOS envisioned how systems across an enterprise can integrate to provide comprehensive visibility into virtually all data that touches any part of the Customer Journey.

Don’t panic. That’s generally good advice—but when business leaders are facing one of the worst economic downturns in more than a decade, it’s not particularly easy guidance to heed. With inflation hitting a 40-year high, companies like Amazon, FedEx, and Meta are in the unfamiliar position of tightening their belts. Yet crisis breeds opportunity.

Today’s shoppers insist on immediacy. They use their phones to get anything they want instantly. When it comes to shopping, a customer walks into a store and expects an item to be waiting for them on the shelf or immediately available through buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS). What does this mean for retailers that want to stay ahead of consumer trends? Let’s take a closer look at what an endless aisle is and what it means for the retail world.

Preview in new tab In today’s digital-first world, and an era of remote and hybrid workplaces, the number of SaaS solutions used by companies on a daily basis is overwhelming – in 2021, organizations worldwide were using an average of 110 SaaS apps! The “SaaS sprawl” created by the widespread adoption of SaaS solutions – from personal productivity tools to business applications – is real.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a special set of metrics that help determine whether business is going in the right or wrong direction. At first glance, it seems that customer service KPI scores take a backseat to traditional business KPIs, like profits, costs and regional sales. However, key customer support metrics may paint a more complete picture of success for the long-term viability of a business.

Today we’ll be exploring Zendesk Answer Bot. Companies of all sizes are adopting AI to automate resolution of the 265 billion customer support requests made every year. A customer support chatbot serves as the first line of defense to respond to customers and help resolve a customer’s questions before looping in a human. As a result, the best chatbots can help save up to 30% of customer service costs while also improving the customer experience.

The Freshworks Fall ’22 Launch highlights our top new product capabilities and solutions from the second half of 2022. Our announcements are focused on three areas: At Freshworks, we are constantly innovating to empower employees, and deliver personalized, delightful customer experiences. Here are some of the highlights for Fall ’22.

So we have looked at what ITSM is and the best practice frameworks available to support the implementation of ITSM tools within an IT team. Equally important is how these concepts, processes, and frameworks can support teams outside IT, from HR, Finance, Facilities, and Customer Service, and for internal and external end customers.

A terrific customer experience (CX) is vital across industries and organizations both large and small – from retail to travel and telecommunications. Because, today, it’s pretty competitive out there, customer preferences and loyalties are shifting, and choices abound. Yet just how great of an impact can it have on companies and their customers?

Even the highest-performing service organisations need to know where they stand among their competitors and how they can continue raising the bar to retain their status as leaders. You can find answers in the 2022 CX Accelerator report, where CX organisations are categorised according to our CX maturity model scale and rank as Starters, Emergers, Risers and CX Champions.

Delivering truly world-class customer experience is a challenge in this (and any) economic climate, where leaders must stay on top of service best practice and customer expectations to remain competitive. To find out how CX leaders do this, Zendesk surveyed nearly 5,000 customer service decision-makers around the world and compiled the results into our 2022 CX Accelerator report.

ITSM is a collection of concepts and processes. How those processes are implemented and adopted can vary. This is where IT service management frameworks come into play and, based on the needs of the business, also help determine what frameworks are best for implementing those ITSM concepts and processes. IT service management frameworks focus on services rather than systems and support the full scope of the practice of service management.

How mature is your CX organisation? As part of Zendesk’s survey of almost 5,000 customer service decision-makers around the world, we asked questions about the attitudes, behaviours and outcomes regarding their people, processes and data/technology. This led to our 2022 CX Accelerator report and maturity scale model, which allows you to assess where your business ranks.