zendesk recognized for

Latin AmericanCustomer ExperienceExcellence in Best Practices

Customer Value Leadership

Zendesk Recognized for

© Frost & Sullivan 2021 The Growth Pipeline Company™

Strategic Imperatives

Frost & Sullivan identifies three key strategic imperatives that impact the customer experience industry:

innovative business models, disruptive technologies, and internal challenges. Every company that is

competing in the customer experience space is obligated to address these imperatives proactively;

failing to do so will almost certainly lead to stagnation or decline. Successful companies overcome the

challenges posed by these imperatives and leverage them to drive innovation and growth. Frost &

Sullivan’s recognition of Zendesk is a reflection of how well it is performing against the backdrop of

these imperatives.

eCommerce business value will reach $6 trillion in 2022. China is expected to lead the market.

A digital, omnichannel user experience strategy will be the key to success for business leaders, marketers, and customer experience planners in next 5 to 10 years.

With collaborative human-machine interaction, Industry 4.0 will begin to move toward Industry 5.0, with mass customization and extreme personalization in 8 to 10 years.

A complex mesh of 200 billion devices around the world will exist by 2030. With more than 20 connected devices per person, companies will invest in digital selling to improve customer experience.

The majority of international companies will shift their focus to digital strategies to improve customer experience in the next 3-5 years.

Digital assistants with cognitive user experience capabilities that understand gestures will be a top choice for technology investment over the next few years.

The overall customer experience will be determined by how seamless and effective it is across the entire value chain.

Companies will focus on impactful, consistent experiences across digital and offline channels and across functions throughout the life cycle journey.

In many businesses, customer experience will overtake product and price in importance in the next 3 to 5 years.

Customer experience has become a major growth driver for businesses to keep pace with customer preferences and gain a competitive edge. Some 89% of customers switch brands due to poor customer experience.

Rapid developments in digitized customer experience have resulted in concerns about privacy and how businesses are tracking user activity and personalizing marketing.

With hyperpersonalization, businesses need to rethink their user experience strategies to cater to their target audience.

SI8

eCommerce, the demand for personalization, and new communication channels are driving strong growth in the customer experience industry. Seamless experiences through omnichannel and cross-channel capabilities will be critical for success.

Subscription models will allow consumer packaged goods companies to increase retention rates.

With the dramatic growth in the number of social media users, brands are considering social retail as a platform (e.g., Instagram Shopping).

Firms are leveraging a diverse range of tools, such as AI and virtual reality, to enable a seamless customer experience across eCommerce and social commerce platforms.

Customers will demand a more interactive user experience led by haptics, sensors, tactile functions, AI, automation, cloud, data analytics, and augmented/virtual reality on e-tailing platforms.

Wearables will allow for virtual coaches and enable more personalized recommendations by leveraging AI.

Wh

y W

hen

INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS

DISRUPTIVE TECHOLOGIES

INTERNAL CHALLENGES


Best Practices Criteria for World-Class Performance

Frost & Sullivan applies a rigorous analytical process to evaluate multiple nominees for each award

category before determining the final award recipient. The process involves a detailed evaluation of best

practices criteria across two dimensions for each nominated company. Zendesk excels in many of the

criteria in the customer experience space.

A Customizable Customer Experience Solution Platform

Customer experience is becoming the paramount way for businesses across sectors to establish and

maintain brand loyalty and differentiate against competition. Customers want a quick and seamless

method of communication with a business’ customer service representatives. Frost & Sullivan research

shows that improving customer experience is the number one corporate objective over the next two

years. Improving digital presence and sales and marketing effectiveness are top of mind. All of these are

related to delivering an excellent customer experience.1 Businesses must remedy this to survive in the

experience-oriented economy, and find solutions that make it easy for customers to engage with

customer support at any time and across a range of channels. An additional challenge from the business’

perspective occurs when determining the scale and capabilities the customer service platform needs to

deliver to achieve key metrics and goals. That is, start-ups and small businesses have needs that differ

from large enterprises, and a one-size solution is not feasible to meet each business’ needs. Customer

experience service providers must meet this challenge by providing a multitude of options, including

quick out-of-box solutions, as well as more customizable and scalable solutions. The global COVID-19

pandemic has also brought forth unique challenges. With employees working from home, they require

better methods of internal collaboration. Additionally, because of stay-at-home orders, there was an

1 Addressing the Experience Delivery Gap: A Sine Qua Non for Making CX an Organization-wide Priority (Frost &

Sullivan, April 2020)


abrupt increase in volume from customers accessing businesses online, forcing companies to improve

efficiency by measuring, tracking, and managing this demand.

Founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Zendesk has since relocated its headquarters to San

Francisco and has global offices to serve the

international market. What started as an electronic

mail (email)-based support and ticketing company,

helping small businesses with their customer service

needs, has grown into a billion-dollar customer

experience enterprise. Zendesk has grown with its

customers and provides a full range of customer

experience services, including customer support,

sales, an open customer relationships management

(CRM) platform, and an application (app)

marketplace. Zendesk serves a range of industries,

including education, finance, government,

healthcare, manufacturing, media, retail, software,

and telecommunications; it can also scale services to meet the needs of start-ups, small businesses, and

large enterprises.

Zendesk demonstrates a strong customer support culture that shows throughout its services and is

especially noteworthy in product development and launches. That is, the company follows three themes

when developing and launching products:

● Create a customer experience and interaction that meets the customer’s needs

● Ensure a company’s agents and teams are set-up for the successful implementation of new

products

● Provide a configurable, customizable, and extensible product to ensure customer success

Thus far, the company has been successful in its endeavors and offers its customers a broad portfolio

with an abundance of customization options, all of which can be scaled-up to meet their specific needs.

Solutions Zendesk offers include the following:

● Zendesk Suite for Service: A complete customer service solution with the following capabilities:

o Ticketing system: An easy-to-use system for tracking, prioritizing, and solving customer

support tickets across multiple channels, bringing customer information and

interactions into one place.

o Live chat & messaging: A software that provides a fast and responsive way to connect

with customers on websites, mobile devices, and social messaging applications.

o Voice: A cloud-based call center software for more personal and productive phone and

short message service support conversations and enables organizations to provide

phone support from the same platform they use to manage all other support channels.

“Once a company commits to the Zendesk platform, they can be up and running within hours or days. With its immediate implementation, the company provides the fastest time-to-value in the industry. Larger legacy competitors cannot beat both Zendesk’s quick product delivery and its large return on investment for customers, key differentiating factors with the company since its beginning. - Elizabeth Whynott, Best Practices Research Analyst


o Help center: A knowledge base that powers both customer self-service and support

agent productivity through content created and organized by Zendesk clients. Content is

available via self-service websites, accessible through application programming

interfaces on websites, in apps and mobile devices, and surfaced to agents within

ticketing systems and chat.

o Community forums: A software that allows customer end-users to connect and

collaborate.

o Reporting & analytics: A tool for organizations to measure and improve the entire

customer experience, with instant access to the customer analytics that matter,

providing a deeper understanding of customers and business that comes with it.

o Answer Bot: A feature available within the help center that uses machine learning to

automatically answer customers’ questions by suggesting content from the knowledge

base.

● Zendesk Sunshine: An open and flexible platform that allows organizations to address an

increasingly broader set of customer experiences. It provides organizations with the ability to

develop a more complete picture of their customer with flexible databases and the ability to

model, store and manage customer profiles, events, objects and relationships.

● Zendesk Sunshine Conversations: The platform that Zendesk’s messaging capabilities are built

on. It allows businesses to extend Zendesk’s messaging capabilities for more sophisticated use

cases and empowers organizations to proactively engage customers, introduce third-party bots

for automation, and design bespoke messaging experiences that help customers transact

directly within the conversation.

● Zendesk Sell: A sales CRM product solution to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline

visibility across our clients’ organization.

Swift Deployment of Customer Experience Solutions

One area where Zendesk stands out is in the initial free-trial offering of its customer experience services.

By providing first-hand experience with the Zendesk platform, customers can see its overall value and

determine which options are a good fit. Working alongside the customer, the company helps them

determine which services, and at what scale, they need to best suit their needs. Once a company

commits to the Zendesk platform, they can be up and running within hours or days. With its immediate

implementation, the company provides the fastest time-to-value in the industry. Larger legacy

competitors cannot beat both Zendesk’s quick product delivery and its large return on investment for

customers, key differentiating factors for the company since its beginning.

Quick response times have been incredibly beneficial during the COVID-19 pandemic when customers

were looking for help to meet the demands of an increasing customer service volume and the need to

work more effectively internally (i.e., measuring, tracking, and managing customer service inquiries).

Zendesk accelerated the production of new services to meet the novel demands created due to stay-at-

home orders. Additionally, the company was successful in guiding its customers through the new


services to help them understand and navigate the novel circumstances and how best to respond. One

customer was able to benefit from the company’s speed of implementation when the physical store

temporarily shut down, and employees started working remotely with no digital plans to handle the

demands from their electronic commerce (e-commerce). Zendesk was able to get its platform up and

running on the customer’s employee’s phones overnight, then, as workers obtained computers, helped

them grow into their new normal and handle their large e-commerce demand.

Value Added Products through Customer Collaboration

While Zendesk’s product offerings are dynamic, its true value lies within its own customer service. The

company’s Voice of the Customer (VoC) program

allows customers to provide the company feedback

about products and services while also giving

customers the opportunity to collaborate on new

products that suit their needs. One of the company’s

innovative new offerings came from the VoC program

when customers expressed an interest in more

channels of communication for the end-user. This

demand led to Zendesk’s acquisition of Smooch in

2019, and it now offers more than 15 pre-packaged

social-messaging and communication channels and can

add new channels within a day of a customer’s request.

Additionally, Zendesk maintains frequent contact with its customers to ensure their satisfaction with its

products and guides them through scaling up their customer experience needs as their business grows.

Moreover, Zendesk also hosts webinars and training events about its services so customers can make

the most of the platform; the company will also work with the customer to help them determine what

they need.

Zendesk further exemplifies its leadership in strong customer values with its investment in its market

research and product development teams. The company’s market research teams work within its

analyst relations team and continuously gather market insights based on customer data that explores

trends within the customer service market. The market research team shares these trends and insights

with executive leadership and product development teams to guide future product design. Zendesk

Messaging, Zendesk Talk, and Zendesk Sell were three such products that came about from customer

feedback and their need for a more robust system to help them provide end-users with a strong

customer experience. With Zendesk, the customer’s voice drives product development efforts.

Steady Revenue Streams and Strong Growth Partnerships

In 2020, Zendesk crossed $1 billion in revenue, a truly remarkable achievement for any company. In

2019, year-over-year revenue increased by 36%, and in the third quarter of 2020, it increased by 24%.

Because of the company’s recurring income from monthly subscriptions from more than 170,000

customers, customers’ ability to scale-up and add on services as they continue to grow, and quick

implementation of the platform for new customers, large revenue increases are easily achievable. The

“With the ability to outfit start-ups and well-established enterprises with end-to-end customer relationship solutions and help companies scale-up as their business grows and needs change, Frost & Sullivan believes Zendesk’s endeavor to expand throughout Latin America is sure to be prosperous.” - Juan Manuel Gonzalez, Research Director


company further plans to increase its market share by expanding its presence in Latin America. Zendesk

already has a solid customer base in the Latin American market but has found an opportunity for further

growth in the region. The company plans to grow its Latin American market by leveraging its strong

customer relationships via events that showcase its achievements with regional customers who have

been successful due to Zendesk’s services.

Furthermore, the company intends to focus on empowering new and trendy companies that will need

help and guidance to build their customer experience solutions. Magazine Luiza, one of Brazil’s largest

retail companies, sought out a customer experience platform capable of providing a robust digital

support solution for customers. Within 45 days, Zendesk was able to implement a help center and

ticketing system, improving the service team’s productivity by 16% and raising the retailer’s customer

satisfaction index by 25%. Zendesk and Magazine Luiza’s relationship helps solidify a strong foundation

for the retailer to continue forming prosperous connections with customers. With the ability to outfit

start-ups and well-established enterprises with end-to-end customer relationship solutions and help

companies scale-up as their business grows and needs change, Frost & Sullivan believes Zendesk’s

endeavor to expand throughout Latin America is sure to be prosperous.

The company’s acquisition of Smooch and collaboration with WhatsApp have been instrumental in

helping Zendesk provide customers with services and features that help make them successful in their

customer experience pursuits. PayJoy is one such company that has seen the benefits of the WhatsApp

collaboration. With the integration, PayJoy has been able to lower their service-level agreement time

from 24 to six hours and, after employee training, down to one minute. Furthermore, with Zendesk

solutions, PayJoy decreased their inbound calls by 60% because they have the ability to reply quickly via

text message. Future partnerships and acquisitions only serve to ensure Zendesk’s ability to provide its

customers with quality service and products.

Conclusion

Zendesk’s leadership in the customer experience industry characterizes the company’s customer-first

vision. The company’s quick deploying, out-of-box services provide a strong foundation towards

businesses’ customer service needs, while its various add-on services and products scale to any sized

business. Zendesk’s commitment to placing its customers first and valuing their feedback and ideas

enables them as a strong contender amongst top legacy competitors. Furthermore, the company’s

expansion plans in Latin America, and its enthusiasm to help customers successfully establish their

customer experience solutions, demonstrates the company’s determination towards growth and

success.

With its strong overall performance in providing robust customer service solutions, Zendesk earns Frost

& Sullivan’s 2021 Latin America Customer Value Leadership Award in the customer experience industry.


What You Need to Know about the Customer Value Leadership

Recognition

Frost & Sullivan's Customer Value Leadership Award recognizes the company that offers products or

services customers find superior for the overall price, performance, and quality.

Best Practices Award Analysis For the Customer Value Leadership Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated the criteria

listed below.

Business Impact

Financial Performance: Strong overall financial

performance is achieved in terms of revenues,

revenue growth, operating margin, and other

key financial metrics

Customer Acquisition: Customer-facing

processes support efficient and consistent new

customer acquisition while enhancing customer

retention

Operational Efficiency: Company staff performs

assigned tasks productively, quickly, and to a

high-quality standard

Growth Potential: Growth is fostered by a

strong customer focus that strengthens the

brand and reinforces customer loyalty

Human Capital: Commitment to quality and to

customers characterize the company culture,

which in turn enhances employee morale and

retention

Customer Impact

Price/Performance Value: Products or services

provide the best value for the price compared

to similar market offerings

Customer Purchase Experience: Quality of the

purchase experience assures customers that

they are buying the optimal solution for

addressing their unique needs and constraints

Customer Ownership Experience: Customers

proudly own the company’s product or service

and have a positive experience throughout the

life of the product or service

Customer Service Experience: Customer service

is accessible, fast, stress-free, and high quality

Brand Equity: Customers perceive the brand

positively and exhibit high brand loyalty


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