One of the latest additions to the portfolio of tools available from Zendesk, Zendesk Sunshine promises companies a new way of managing customer relationships. The Zendesk CRM solution connects all of your customer data in one environment, wherever it comes from.
With Zendesk Sunshine, companies have a new tool for managing the increasingly complicated customer journey. The open and flexible CRM platform, native to AWS (Amazon Web Services), gives you a full view of your customer experience ecosystem. At the same time, admins and developers get all the access they need to enhance customer experience.
According to Zendesk, Sunshine is the solution companies need to bring conversations “full circle.” By aligning information from inside and outside of Zendesk, Sunshine offers a unique experience.
Zendesk Sunshine review: Features
Sunshine, by Zendesk, is made up of four central components, conversations, custom objects, custom events, and unified profiles. These individual segments align all of the data business leaders need to make intelligent decisions about business operations. Each segment of Sunshine helps companies to store and use data more effectively. Let’s take a closer look:
Profiles – With profiles, companies can consolidate customer information from various sources, including billing systems, contact centres, mobile apps, and marketing software. The aligned information creates a complete picture of each individual customer.
Custom Events – With custom events, businesses can capture every interaction to create a comprehensive map of the customer journey. The Sunshine Custom Event solution includes any programmatic activity your system or application can associate with a customer, such as purchasing transactions, website visits, and even customer service interactions. You can also access information from Zendesk apps.
Custom objects – The Custom Objects part of Zendesk Sunshine allows businesses to store and surface new data within Zendesk, such as order histories and product catalogues from multiple sources. Custom Objects support a wide variety of structured data types, following the JSON Schema standard. This includes hierarchical data entries, such as arrays and objects.
Developers can use relationships to create powerful connections between objects, modelling links between data with one-to-one, and one-to-many, or even many-to-many connections. Sunshine offers access to REST APIs for data stores.
Sunshine Conversations – This is a developer-friendly and flexible messaging solution built into Sunshine which allows companies to unify messages from every channel into a single conversational tool. Sunshine conversations can be shared with every department, allowing companies to build more comprehensive and interactive learning experiences.
Sunshine Conversations can also add conversational capabilities to existing software or company websites too. You’ll even be able to link in channels like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Other Features – Zendesk Sunshine also offers access to Workflows, as part of an Early Access Project. The Workflows are implemented through API calls, and companies can use conditional branching logic to define their workflows. There’s also the option to leverage custom objects for creating workflows to automate workflows, deflect tickets and more.
Zendesk Sunshine review: Benefits
Zendesk Sunshine is a flexible, open, and extendible CRM platform, native to the AWS environment. You can use it to align all customer data as effectively as possible, for better contextual tracking of conversations. Plus, Sunshine gives your developer team more access to opportunities for building better experiences for customers.
Because Sunshine builds on top of AWS, it’s also great for people who want to connect to the Amazon Eventbridge space for powerful workflows. Benefits of Sunshine include:
- Single pane of glass profiles: For years, companies have been striving to bring more information together in a single environment to allow for a unified view of the customer conversation. Sunshine’s unified profile makes it easier to track discussions with clients from any channel. The more information you can connect from different environments, the easier it is to understand the full customer journey
- Flexibility: Zendesk’s flexible and open environment in Sunshine is perfect for developers looking to build unique opportunities. There are countless pre-existing integrations available with popular tools like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Plus, you can also create API integrations to make sharing information across channels much easier
- Better omni-channel management: Bringing conversations together from multiple channels makes it much easier for companies to offer their clients the kind of consistent experiences they’re looking for. If you’re building an omni-channel customer service strategy, Zendesk will help you to strengthen your standing with your customers
- Endless access to data sources: The customised objects aspect of the Zendesk Sunshine solution means it’s simple for developers and businesses to store and connect various data sources, including product and order history, or previous interactions with the business. This access to extensive information allows for more contextual and personalised conversations
- Security: Zendesk’s Sunshine solution is built with the highest security and compliance standards in mind, so you can rest assured any information you are gathering from your conversational ecosystem will remain safe. There’s a comprehensive support system in place to help any business with specialist requirements regarding security
- Events Connector: The Events Connector solution means you can stream events from Zendesk in real-time and leverage the AWS environment for a range of use cases. Events can range all the way from the creation of a ticket to the use of advanced analysis and machine learning to automate customer service strategies
Zendesk Sunshine Review: Verdict
Zendesk Sunshine is introducing the world to a new generation of CRM technology. This flexible solution ensures businesses of all sizes can connect customer conversations on a range of channels, to ensure they’re getting a full view of how the client journey really works. The ability to build on your environment with API and integrations for developers means there’s no limit to how far your solution can scale. Access to the Events Connector with AWS even makes automation possible.
As Zendesk Sunshine continues to evolve with more features and functionality, there’s no doubt more companies will continue to see the benefits of a flexible, customisable CRM environment.
