Honest review from a first-person perspective

A few days ago Zendesk put an end to Zendesk Roadshow 2018 that toured all over Europe from the United Kingdom to Russia. Lotus Themes had the privilege of being there and we’d like to share valuable insights about CX and Zendesk with you.

The Roadshow event offered highlights from The Future of Customer Experience and provided Zendesk users with the latest news, practical advice on best-in-class customer service experiences and technologies as well as customer case studies and in-person access to Zendesk executives.

One of the last events took place in wintry Helsinki, Finland. Zendesk gave a unique opportunity to meet stars like Morten Primdahl, Timo Halonen and Tom Toivonen as well as Zendesk current and potential customers. CEOs, CTOs, Marketing Directors, Heads of Customer Support, Customer Service Managers - all attended this Zendesk Roadshow.

Zendesk Roadshow: What’s on the agenda?

Stop Distracting Your Customers

The official part of the Zendesk Roadshow event started with the insightful presentation ‘Stop Distracting Your Customers’ by Morten Primdahl, co-founder of Zendesk (in case you don’t know him yet).

The rise of technology has made customer expectations higher and customers often feel frustrated when interacting with companies. Today our aim is not only to meet consumer needs in terms of products and services but also not to distract them.

Morten told us about three fundamental strategies that will help us make our customer experiences better in view of new technologies:

Be credible: Do what you say you will do

Be proactive: Get ahead of your customers

Be consistent: Don't lose the thread

One of the efficient solutions is the omnichannel customer support where a single conversation is connected seamlessly.

The topic of how to stop distracting your customers was discussed in detail by Andreas Olofstam, Senior Solution Consultant at Zendesk. He explained each strategy mentioned above and told us how to implement them, using the funny example of Wile E. Coyote.

Don’t lose the thread

Omnichannel user experience . Allow your customers to contact you wherever they are and in any possible way.

Self-service and automation . Let your customers use self-service as much as possible because that’s what they want to do. If you’d like to add custom integrations to automate your workflows, make sure they are fully integrated in your current system.

Context-rich agent interface . Empower your agents with as much information as possible to let them make the right decisions and pick up the conversation at any moment.

Do what you say you’ll do

As your company grows, the customer support becomes different and collaboration gets more complex. The best tip here is, ‘The faster you start collaborating with all people involved, the faster you get back to your customers and the faster they become happy’.

Get requests to the right agent with the right tools and information.

Work across teams to solve customer problems. The more you can connect and collaborate within your system even if it’s not a part of your company, the more knowledge and information you can learn. So, the next customer will have more updated information.

Always capture new information that needs to be added or refined. Create feedback tickets internally saying something like, “You need to refine this help center article because it’s not working”. When it comes to Zendesk knowledge base articles , they need to be constantly updated. Encourage your agents to take notes about how to improve your help center and create new content. As a result, you’ll have an updated Zendesk help center with a better search and an increased ticket deflection rate.

Everything is at your disposal now. Workflow and collaboration tools help companies respond to customer needs quickly and easily, whereas Zendesk Guide provides you with a smart knowledge base for better self-service and empowered agents.

Get ahead of your customers

Use information about your customers to be proactive when you communicate with them. Think what might be a problem before something happens. It will make your company efficient and for customers it will feel like the perfect timing and great customer care. Solutions like Zendesk Connect let you manage proactive communication to deliver better customer experiences.

Consider this advice when trying to get ahead of your customers:

Follow up what has happened

Anticipate what may happen

Analyse data to understand why customers are churning or what should be the relevant upsell. Reporting tools like Zendesk Explore will be very helpful in this. It allows you to analyze, understand, and share your business information.

Enabling growth through multichannel customer experience

Timo Halonen, Services Director at Verkkokauppa.com Oyj, told a great story of their success. Their online retailer became biggest and most visited in Finland.

Verkkokauppa.com Oyj heavily relies on multichannel customer support as a revenue driver. They’ve been loyal Zendesk customers for many years and use almost all the products, including the self-service help center (Zendesk Guide). The interesting point Timo made is that despite being so successful, they are still developing their strategies. For instance, they analyze customer requests every day(!) and make use of new findings to make their customer experiences even better.

Improve CX by engaging real-time surveys

Tom Toivonen, CEO at SurveyPal, gave an inspiring talk on the importance of surveys for better customer service experiences. He gave practical advice on how to boost Zendesk surveying capabilities, improve response rates and receive accurate feedback:

Build good-looking and engaging surveys

Trigger surveys at the most appropriate time in the customer journey

Organize and structure your survey in a convenient way

Measure KPIs like CSAT, CES, NPS, etc.

Get real-time feedback data on your Zendesk

The Zendesk Roadshow series is definitely worth visiting. Everyone from a loyal fan to a potential customer will find something interesting. Speakers share the latest news about Zendesk as a product and customer experience in general. Also, they share their own insights based on their expertise as customers and partners. And all this is accompanied by networking when you can talk to anyone who is present at the Roadshow event: like-minded users, partners and Zendesk executives. So, don’t miss the chance of asking your questions and sharing ideas in person.