Time is everything these days. A photocopy shop in NYC has a sign on the counter: “The difficult we do right away; the impossible takes a little longer.” Taking your customer service online, using modern, cloud-based support software, brings the joke to reality: you can now offer customers a level of convenience and speed that is not possible without modern online customer service tools. This is the digital transformation many companies are making.

Welcome to the first app round-up for 2019. As you kickstart your new year, here are some of the latest apps in the Freshdesk Marketplace which you could help you enrich the customer support process for you, your agents and your customers!

Customers make decisions based on how easy companies make it to transact with them. From pre-purchase questions through payment and delivery of goods, your customers expect a seamless purchasing experience. That means your company must meet them on the channels they prefer, as well as move with customers from channel to channel.

Visionaries in the field of artificial intelligence in customer service see radical changes on the horizon, with a tipping point lying just a few years in the future. And if the prognostications of these experts—Zendesk partners Rick Nucci of Guru, Mike Murchison of Ada, and Mikhail Naumov of DigitalGenius—come to pass, AI will upend how customer service teams work in ways that will have far-reaching ramifications for companies across the globe.

Artificial intelligence used to only exist in science fiction films. That’s no longer the case. Today, brands are using it to improve efficiency and productivity in all areas of business. In fact, 55% of established companies have either started making investments in artificial intelligence or are planning to do so by 2020. These investments can come in many forms, but one of the most effective is in using artificial intelligence to power chatbots.

Thrun, who founded the famous Google car project and is the chairman of Udacity, is bang on. If you really think about it, all of AI is basically a march towards building machines which can behave, process, and think like humans (but of course, not replace them).

If you’re looking for ways to improve your company’s customer support, you’ve likely come across a solid amount of articles and lists that tell you the things your team should be doing. These kinds of tips can be an excellent starting point for putting together an effective support approach. But it’s equally important to have an idea of the strategies you’ll want to avoid.

Customer support is a make or break service for a business that differs by region. While 24/4 live chats and support phone numbers that connect to skilled agents and managers are the most direct ways to communicate with your audience, it helps to also practice proactive support techniques.

Unsatisfied customers are three times more likely1 to share their negative experiences than happy ones. There’s also the fact that unsatisfied customers tend to cost you. It can take up to 12 positive experiences to make up for just one unresolved negative one. Angry and frustrated customers can tarnish your brand’s name, while satisfied customers mean more great recommendations and reviews for your business.