Instead of making your customers wander through the pages of Google, optimizing your knowledge base will help them find information fast – a huge advantage when it comes to meeting your customers’ needs. If your knowledge base isn't optimized for search engines, you’re losing a large number of potential new customers. Moreover, you’re missing out on the opportunity of enabling your existing customers to self-serve.

In the early 2000s, the thought of companies connecting with customers over instant messaging would have seemed ludicrous. But in 2021? That’s the norm. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2021, messaging channels like WhatsApp and Facebook are becoming new consumer favorites. Nearly a third of customers said they messaged companies over communication apps for the first time in 2020.

When surveyed, more than half of customer service agents said they usually have to switch between different systems to solve a customer request. Here’s why: When a customer reaches out for support, an agent typically needs a bit of context to fully understand the customer’s situation or problem.

It was months into the pandemic, and we were all stuck inside. Wintertime in Wisconsin can be beautiful, with its snowy scenes and frozen lakes that seem to stretch on forever. But this winter was different. It felt cold, dark, and lonely without any chance of seeing friends and family. After several months of watching movies and baking cookies, I realized I needed a pastime. Something to keep my hands and my mind occupied.

You’re at your desk when you overhear two fellow support agents debating the difference between customer service and customer experience. They ask you for your take, and your palms turn sweaty—you have no idea how they’re different. Many support agents use customer experience and customer service interchangeably, but the two terms do not mean the same thing. Understanding the difference between them is critical. Why?

Here are the newest integrations from Zendesk to help your team provide great experiences.

Imagine you open your computer one morning to find a deluge of emails and phone calls, but you have no system in place for fielding them all. You may feel overwhelmed or stressed, and you might even start to doubt your capabilities. For HR team members, this situation isn’t out of the ordinary. They receive dozens of requests—if not more—from company employees each day. An HR help desk is the solution for navigating these numerous requests.

There are significant, long-term implications for how IT is managed and supported. Providing a fully integrated view across end-points, cloud, networking and applications in a hybrid deployment model has become critical for the service desk and the companies they support. While there are myriad variables that need to be addressed, for purposes of brevity we are going to focus on three that are likely to be critical in moving the needle for enterprises adopting a hybrid model.

People love to gather in groups and discuss the topics they’re most interested in, whether it’s in person or online. That’s why so many consumers turn to community forums when they need information or support from their favorite brands. These online platforms are where users can come to ask questions, enter into debates, share knowledge, and discuss topics of common interest. In many cases, users can get information about how a product works or ask questions about specific features.

What customers want and what they get might not always align, but the stakes are getting higher for any business that falls short. 80 percent of customers say they’d switch to a competitor after more than one bad experience. And that’s a number that should have most companies paying attention. Why? Customer expectations have shifted considerably over the past year.