The process of collecting and processing customer data has become complex for businesses. Traditionally, teams have only had access to limited amounts of customer data analytics, and in many cases, the information is inconsistent across systems. With a lack of basic best practices for customer data management, businesses are missing the ability to see the full scope of how customers move through the buying journey.

As a brand, you want to create long-lasting relationships with customers, but relationships don’t just materialize from nothing. It takes time and effort to establish trust with the brand. To do that, businesses often include customer loyalty programs in their marketing strategy. Loyalty programs, if executed well and with the customer at the center, can help your existing customers feel good about purchasing from you.

As businesses respond and adapt to life after the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s more important than ever that organizations get their internal communications right. To do that, senior leaders should focus on the audience of their change management communication: their employees. Read on to find out how a focus on effective communication and employee engagement can help you carry out an organizational change for your business.

Companies today manage three times more customer data than they did five years ago, according to the 2020 Customer Experience Trends Report. In many ways, this greater access to data is a blessing. With more information on leads and customers, sales reps are better able to provide personalized service.

This month brings quite a number of new integrations, mostly surrounding Sell, to better ease the workload of your sales team. Dive in!

Businesses are rapidly evolving, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. If anything, the pandemic has accelerated change, demanding organizations make bigger pivots even faster.

The software-buying process is notoriously stressful and complex, which tends to carry over when buyers become customers, given the challenges many support organizations grapple with. According to Dan Gingiss, author and keynote speaker, customer support experts and practitioners showed marginal improvement in 2019. Since the buying journey is already complex, does the customer journey have to be just as complicated?

The only constant in life is change—and it’s difficult to embrace the unknown. That’s why the employee experience is essential to change management, when leaders are charged with supporting their teams through adjusting to new and different ways of working.

Customers can be a fickle bunch—happy one day, gone the next. That’s why it’s important for companies of all shapes and sizes to track and understand their customer churn rate. Customer churn rate is an important metric that impacts nearly every aspect of a company’s business, from product and revenue to customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. Because what’s a business without customers?

Creating great experiences for your customers starts with having a complete understanding of who they are—and that requires having the right customer data. But too often, this data is siloed in disparate systems that don’t talk to each other and is spread across a complex landscape that’s hard to analyze and understand. The end result is ineffective agents, poor customer insights, and unsatisfied customers.

Change can be scary. We’re living through a global pandemic, SpaceX is launching more rockets into space, and scientists have discovered a way to grow mini brains from skin cells. People like the comfort of things they know, like their favorite fuzzy socks or Mom’s chocolate chip cookies. So even when change is a good thing, it might be met with fear and resistance. And when it comes to business, leaders need to recognize that the human side of change can impact their outcomes.

Consumers today expect a personalized customer experience catered to them as individuals. In order to meet these expectations, you need to understand what your audience wants and needs, and you must understand how to deliver on those needs better than your competition. The CRM process helps your organization achieve these goals. Consisting of five main steps, it’s a strategy for keeping every customer interaction personalized and meaningful.

Your customer support team are heroes. Zendesk was founded on a belief in the power of great service experiences. We wanted the world to experience a positive interaction as the norm—as customers, as agents, and from any other side involved in using, operating, maintaining and paying for a customer support solution. Your company may have been founded on an entirely different passion. For amazing chocolate, or an alternative to big-box retailing experience, or a certain kind of footwear.

Every business owner wants to keep their customers happy and loyal. But in today’s digitally connected world, word spreads faster than ever before, so if a customer isn’t pleased, they might let their entire social network know about it. Your customers want to get in touch with your business the same way they would with friends and family—so you need to be present on the channels they prefer.

What is data visualization? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like — using charts, maps, infographics, and other images to visually convey the meaning of data. There’s nothing particularly new about data visualization. One could argue that ancient cave drawings constitute an early example — even the pie chart, dates back to 1801 when it was used to illustrate the Turkish Empire’s landholdings.

Every business has a customer base that they’ve worked hard to attract and retain through a combination of marketing, social media and brand strategies. You invested a lot of time and effort (and probably money) to gain those customers’ trust, so it makes sense that you want to keep them. That’s where a strong focus on customer retention comes in handy.

With evolving technology and rising customer expectations as the byproduct, businesses need to be agile and accept change. Change is difficult, but as we’re experiencing in a world gone digital, imperative. At its core, change management is about helping people through change, whether you’re restructuring leadership, rolling out new software, or adjusting strategies that are no longer profitable.

Though the world is going through some pretty dramatic changes, Zendesk and our ecosystem of partners are here to help with tools to keep your business moving forward.

Messaging helps people foster strong relationships with their family and friends. Now messaging platforms are open for business. Conversational business comprises the different ways messaging channels can be used in support, marketing, sales, and beyond. Customers, shoppers, prospects and leads want to communicate with businesses with the same ease and convenience that they experience when talking to their friends and family.