Squelch Closes Out Zendesk Showcase Series in San Francisco

Throughout 2019, the Zendesk team has criss-crossed the globe to produce a collection of events called the Zendesk Showcase. The goal of each one-day conference was to create a space for customer experience, support, and success leaders to come together to learn about the latest CX trends, tools, and strategies.

Squelch was honored to sponsor all of the U.S. Showcase events including Zendesk Dallas on April 10, Zendesk NYC on May 22, Zendesk Chicago on July 18, and Zendesk San Francisco on October 3. While each was filled with insightful talks and memorable moments, it was particularly meaningful to close out the series in the Bay Area, home to Squelch headquarters.

Zendesk San Francisco: Splash + Substance

The San Francisco Showcase took place on October 3 at The Masonic, a historic venue at the top of Nob Hill — which led to an unanticipated workout for at least a few attendees. Thankfully, what awaited them was a satisfying combination of splash and substance for which Zendesk events are known.

Splash

Zendesk ensures its conferences are never boring by injecting playfulness throughout the day, and the San Francisco Showcase was no exception. For example, rather than handing out generic totes, Zendesk harnessed its conversational commerce capabilities to enable attendees to customize the design of a travel pouch, which was then printed on-site.

This sense of fun could also be seen in the end-of-day reception, where traditional hors d’oeuvres were supplemented by a literal wall of donuts, just waiting to be plucked and devoured.

Probably the best example, though, of Zendesk Showcase’s characteristic splash was the closing speaker: Olympic figure skater and LGBTQ activist Adam Rippon.

Rippon was an unexpected choice for a CX conference, but the stories he shared of challenging coaching relationships, financial struggles, and the ups and downs of elite competition actually contained many lessons for businesses looking to boost their bottom line while also enhancing the customer experience. Attendees also walked away with a signed copy of his yet-to-be-released book, Beautiful on the Outside.

Substance

Zendesk packed quite a bit of style into its San Francisco Showcase but didn’t skimp on substance either. The day was filled with talks on the main stage plus spotlights on various Zendesk products in the lobby. Multiple expo hall areas teemed with vendors offering demos.

As a conference sponsor, Squelch was among those in the upstairs expo hall, and our team was excited by the opportunity to chat one-on-one with attendees and show our customer experience optimization solution in action.

We also found time to catch many of the Zendesk SF speakers. Here are our top five takeaways:

• “#CX is going to rule the world.” — Mio Adilman, Host of Zendesk’s Repeat Customer podcast
• “Be the company your customers want you to be. This isn’t just about your customer support department. It is about putting the customer at the center of your business and building out from there.” — Mikkel Svane, Founder and CEO of Zendesk
• “It’s crucial and important to set up a place for your customers to gather.” — Shawna Wolverton, SVP of Product at Zendesk, who used the Showcase to announce a new product called Zendesk Gather
• “Sometimes we can’t see the forest from the trees and we need to cut the data a different way.” — Derrick Diaz, IT Ops Helpdesk Manager at Pinterest
• “The 5 E’s that guide how Logitech thinks about CX: Empathy, Effortless, Error-free, Expectations, and Engagement.” — Massimo Rapparini, CIO and Head of Customer Experience at Logitech

Squelch-Zendesk Software Integration

A key reason we decided to sponsor the Showcase series was the fact that our software integrates so well with Zendesk’s platform.

The Squelch-Zendesk integration is a native integration with Zendesk Support that helps customer-facing agents resolve their most challenging tickets without having to leave their Zendesk workspace. In addition to the native Zendesk Support integration, we offer an API-level connector between the Squelch software and Zendesk Guide, enabling our software to index all of the information included in Guide.

Key benefits:

• As customer support and success agents access their Zendesk Support and Guide content, they can also view other content stored across the enterprise. This makes it easier for agents to find the information they need to resolve complex tickets faster and reduce customer churn.
• The Squelch software automatically identifies tickets that are about the same customer issue as the current case — including displaying only similar tickets that have already been resolved — to ensure that time is saved and problems are only solved once.
• Our solution analyzes and models the data it indexes to provide insights about customers as well as team performance to managers and other stakeholders.
• The Squelch UI integration reflects the native permissions in Zendesk Support and Guide, making it easy to set up and maintain.
• Our platform also offers fine-grain settings for Zendesk admins to configure the connection according to corporate policies.

See You Next Year

While the Showcase series has concluded, Zendesk is already gearing up for next year’s events. The lineup will include the return of Zendesk Relate, a three-day conference featuring six content tracks and 300 speakers. You can read about our experience at Relate 2018 and then learn more about Relate 2020, happening March 3-5 in Miami. We hope to see you there!