Global AI spending is exploding. According to current trends, it will go from $2 billion in 2018 to over $7.3 billion in just the next four years1. Many publications have proclaimed it as the “next big thing” in the business world. They seem to believe that it’s poised to change the way companies interact with customers altogether. They’re less clear, though, on how businesses can actually use it. But today, one of the best uses of AI is customer service.

SAN FRANCISCO – November 13, 2018 – Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE: ZEN) today launched Sunshine, an open and flexible customer relationship management (CRM) platform built completely in the public cloud on Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS). Zendesk Sunshine enables businesses to connect and understand all their customer data, wherever it lives, and gives their developers the ability to build and deploy customer apps and services faster.

Today’s customers are moving and changing at an incredibly fast pace. They’re better connected and more informed, and they’re bringing higher expectations into their conversations with businesses as a result. It is tough for businesses to keep up with those expectations. Too often, companies are held back by proprietary technologies and old ways of thinking.

Think about how much valuable data is generated by just a handful of customer service requests. With this data, your business can learn more about why customers reach out for help—and more importantly—what your business can do to improve your customer experience.

Are the support team, website and Freshdesk portal ready to handle the customer influx of the holiday season? That’s the question we ask ourselves every year before the peak period starts. During the holiday season, the incoming traffic may increase by 10 times, whereas ticket volumes can increase by up to 50%, making the life of your agents exhausting and stressful.

Are support agents happy with Freshdesk Mint? This was the most pressing question we had on our minds when we introduced Freshdesk Mint a year back. Over months, we spoke to our customers to gather feedback on what people liked and disliked. We were delighted to learn that the overall feedback for Freshdesk Mint was very positive. But we didn’t just stop with customer interviews. Using Heap, an analytics tool, we analyzed product adoption to learn from our success and our mistakes.

There are A LOT of features available for companies to choose from when deciding what’s important in their Business to Business (B2B) customer support software solution. We made this list to help companies think about the key features these solutions offer and their value. Without further ado, here’s our list of 20 essential features in a B2B customer support system.