This year, the holiday season reminded us we have a healthy appetite, not just for food, but also for additions to the Zendesk Apps Marketplace. This month we added 14 new apps and integrations to the general marketplace and we hope you saved room for them.

When two of the world’s most recognized fine watch brands, Citizen and Bulova, merged in 2018, they faced more than just the challenge of maintaining their distinctive identities, unique designs, and technologies. With one support organization having to serve customers for both brands, it became clear that streamlining the way the customer service team operated needed to be a priority—or else the customer experience would suffer. At issue?

Customers are engaging with more connected devices than ever before—they’re getting around on smart electric scooters, slyly reading text messages on Apple Watches during meetings, and telling Amazon Alexa which Cardi B song to play next—all of which is part of a phenomenon known as the Internet of Things (IoT). And, this is only the tip of the hyper-connected iceberg. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that there will be 41.6 billion connected devices in 2025.

‘Tis the season to be flying. This year, the TSA expects a “record breaking holiday season.” Between Thanksgiving and New Years, tens of millions of people will be traveling across the United States, with over 41 million travelers crossing state lines in the Christmas season alone. With all the waiting, spending, and flying, traveling can be stressful.

Customization is one of the biggest challenges with help centers, whether it’s for a startup or a global enterprise. While they may have a help center and are already reaping business benefits from it, important details can fall through the cracks when customizing it, specifically when it comes to user experience (UX).

Gone are the days of the clichéd three-martini sales lunch. While a boozy meal and a handshake were once the highwater mark for salesmanship in decades past, modern companies must navigate complex sales cycles spanning multiple channels with engagement from cross-functional teams. The stakes are high for companies that want to give customers a seamless and satisfying experience across the channels that are most important to them.

We just wrapped up our 14 city “Closing Time” tour, where we’ve been gathering local sales leaders for a face-to-face discussion about how customer expectations about the purchasing process are rapidly evolving, and how the sales profession is changing to keep up. Last month in Austin, we recorded a quick discussion with one of our guests, Zendesk customer ClearCorrect, a leading manufacturer of clear orthodontic aligners.