Zendesk Brings Advanced Voice to Customer Service
Customer service support is often a make or break attribute for companies offering goods or services. For Zendesk, customer service is the company's entire business, one it is expanding with an Advanced Voice capability for its flagship Zendesk platform.
Offering voice capabilities is not an entirely new thing for the company. Ryan Nichols, general manager of Zendesk Voice, explained that the feature was introduced in 2011. Zendesk Voice is being used by more than 4,000 customers who use it to sign up for phone numbers, take inbound calls, make outbound calls, record calls, transcribe voicemails and automatically create tickets, directly from their Zendesk support center.
The Advanced Voice product adds multi-level interactive voice response to route customers to the right agent or department and provide recorded responses for frequently-asked questions.
In addition, warm transfer technology allows agents to ensure smooth handoffs, limit repetitive conversations and speed up resolve time,” Nichols told Enterprise Apps Today.
The Advanced Voice service also includes real-time dashboards that allow managers to monitor queue and agent activity and make adjustments, if necessary. There is also an integration with Zendesk Insights, a data analytics and business intelligence capability for better understanding performance and customer service.
Zendesk is aiming to make it easy to deploy the new voice features.
“Zendesk’s Advanced Voice offering integrates seamlessly with an organization’s existing phone equipment,” Nichols said. “You can route calls to and from the existing landline phones on your PBX, or to an existing IVR.”
Since Zendesk Voice is a cloud-based service, most customers also route calls to mobile phones, home phones and agent laptops, Nichols added.
While consumers have more options than ever for interacting with companies, a human conversation remains the “moment of truth” when a customer relationship is either solidified or lost forever while terrible hold music plays, Nichols said.
“Our vision is to help companies move from thinking about phone support as an obligation to thinking about voice as an opportunity to engage customers in a highly personal way,” he said.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Apps Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
Sean Michael is a writer who focuses on innovation and how science and technology intersect with industry, technology Wordpress, VMware Salesforce, And Application tech. TechCrunch Europas shortlisted her for the best tech journalist award. She enjoys finding stories that open people's eyes. She graduated from the University of California.
