How Partners Are Winning With Zendesk AI
Zendesk is helping partners capitalize on growing demand for AI-powered customer service by shifting the conversation from simple automation to complete issue resolution.
As organizations look to improve service experiences and outcomes, partners are increasingly turning to Zendesk’s expertise and technology to help customers resolve problems faster and more efficiently. In this CRNtv interview, Carrie Francey discusses how Zendesk’s AI strategy, resolution platform, and expanding ecosystem are creating new opportunities for partners to deliver transformative customer service solutions and drive long-term growth.
Kena Johnson: Zendesk talks about customer service resolutions, not deflection. How does that impact the conversation partners are having with customers and the opportunities it creates for them?
Carrie Francey: It's a really timely question here at Zendesk. This evolution has been an intentional shift from helping our customers set up simple bots to helping them completely rethink how service is done.
The conversation is no longer about how do we deflect this ticket? It is now about how do we design an AI powered service operation that actually resolves issues end to end? This transformation has changed our entire sales motion, turning what used to be transactional software deals into long-term transformation efforts. This opens the door for an incredible, lucrative go-to-market opportunity filled with re-occurring services, repeatable IP and ongoing optimization. With this wave of innovation that we announced, partners are uniquely positioned to serve as a trusted AI service architect for our customers.
Kena: With the Resolution Platform, how is Zendesk changing what partners can deliver with AI compared to older service tools?
Carrie: The Zendesk Resolution Platform and AI capabilities allows our partners to build meaningful solutions that solve a customer's critical business issues. The opportunity for partners is strongest when they're building agents around the kinds of problems that they know best. So, that could be a partner with deep industry expertise in the retail space or financial services or even in the employee service or IT space or any other workflow that is relevant in the market. This also creates a strong opportunity for repeatable IP, enabling our partners to really develop customizable solutions that help them scale faster and reduce time to market.
Kena: Zendesk's recent acquisitions have accelerated innovation and deepened product capability. What new possibilities does that create for partners building solutions or services?
Carrie: It's unlimited. We’re very excited about this. As Zendesk platform capabilities continue to expand, so do our services opportunities for our partners. Let me take one great example and that's our recent Forethought acquisition. Forethought AI agents by Zendesk now allows partners to build AI agents that can work in conjunction with absolutely any platform, so not just Zendesk. This is creating a whole new revenue stream for AI opportunities with our partners. There are also so many other possibilities with the Zendesk Resolution Platform. The expertise our partners bring to developing world class solutions using all of our capabilities, it just never ceases to amaze me the opportunities that our Pesolution platform is opening up to our partner ecosystem now.
Kena: Zendesk was named AWS Global Customer Experience Partner of the Year. Congratulations. How does that AWS relationship show up for partners when they're competing and closing in the field?
Carrie: We are extremely honored to be recognized as AWS Partner of the Year. It really underscores how Zendesk and AWS continue to collaborate to drive innovation and deliver outcomes to our customers. That collaboration extends to our partner ecosystem. We've built comprehensive go-to market motions with our joint services partners and AWS has been leaning in at every step along the journey. Whether it's providing sales support, offerings, campaign offerings or really helping us uncover different funding opportunities throughout the sales cycle, AWS has been just a tremendous partner working hand in hand with our partner ecosystem in a power of three effort.
Learn more about how you can partner with Zendesk to expand your services portfolio.