First Virtual Meeting of ZUG UK

The ZUG UK’s launch event showcased Zendesk’s big plans for 2022 – from improving bot intelligence through to enhancing the logic of routing engines.

End users had the opportunity to discuss their challenges with experts from Zendesk and Route 101, as well as learn more about Messaging and the Agent Workspace and how these tools can help organisations to improve their digital engagement with customers.

This month we held the first of our quarterly member meet-ups: virtual events designed to not only share the latest products and innovations from Zendesk, but also to give users a chance to talk through their challenges with each other and the Zendesk and Route 101 teams. 

This inaugural event covered Zendesk’s business plans and product roadmap, and held deep dive sessions into Messaging and Agent Workplace. These are all available for ZUG members to view on demand. 

Agile and customer focused
The meet-up was kicked off by Zendesk’s EMEA COO Peter Lorant, who discussed the Zendesk’s priorities for 2022, which include leveraging AI, machine learning and data analytics to improve customer intelligence across platforms. The business continues to make exciting inroads into messaging and conversational CX.

Peter also highlighted that as the company scales up you can expect more from Zendesk in core industries such as retail, gaming and banking, and as we settle into this post-pandemic ‘new normal’, Zendesk is keen to discuss what the move to hybrid working means for its customers and how it can support them. 

Zendesk’s product roadmap 
In Zendesk’s EMEA CTO Matthias Goehler’s session, members were given an overview of Zendesk’s long-term product roadmap, which has three overarching themes: the enterprise sector, developing Zendesk as a platform and leveraging the latest AI and ML technologies. 

Matthias discussed a number of exciting product plans, including improving the intelligence of bots and making further investments into unified omnichannel experiences. 

Matthias also showcased the work underway to enhance logic to factor in agents’ skill sets, availability and capacity. In time, he enthused, custom logic will be available to meet customers’ unique requirements. 

A deep dive into Messaging and Agent Workspace 
Zendesk believes messaging is the future – for service, commerce and marketing – and therefore ZUG’s first deep dives focused on the benefits of Messaging and Agent Workspace.
Route 101’s Head of Solution Engineering Richard Simpson and CX Consultant Fern Carey started with a session on the demand for digital engagement from customers. 
They noted that 60% of customers who moved online due to the pandemic will maintain these behaviours going forward, which has led to 80% of customer service organisations shifting their focus to digital messaging channels in order to meet demand. 
They discussed how the Agent Workspace can help in this area, highlighting that research has found it leads to 10% faster responses to customers and 35% faster resolution of customer requests. 

After providing tips on journey management, training and onboarding considerations they passed over to Philip Crump, a Zendesk Implementation Consultant at Route 101, who closed the meet up with a helpful demonstration of how to set up Agent Workspace for new users. 

Registered members can view all sessions from the ZUG Spring 2022 meeting online and the summer event is scheduled for June 15th.