That’s a wrap: A look back at Zendesk Relate 2022
We loved seeing you at Zendesk Relate 2022. Here are a few highlights—and a peek into what you can still explore online.
Last updated January 6, 2023
It was fabulous to return to the stage, both digital and actual, for our flagship event. We kicked off Zendesk Relate 2022 on May 11 with a live keynote streamed from the beautiful San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, followed by the first of three digital broadcasts. It truly was a global event, with registrants from more than 170 countries. Here are a few highlights—and if we missed you, the good news is that all the content is still available to watch on-demand, at your own pace.
For our first hybrid event, it was wonderful to bring an intimate group of customers and partners together for viewing parties in both San Francisco and London. We loved the opportunities to connect even more deeply with great brands and our customers and to bring some of the digital content to life on stage as fireside chats.
There were moments not to be missed in the keynote from our CEO Mikkel Svane, who ushered in the era of Conversational CRM, and whose business casual pajama bottoms may have stolen the show.
At Zendesk Relate 2022, we shared the Zendesk vision for customer experience, heard some amazing, transformational stories from our customers and partners, and introduced new features, offerings, and services. (Read more about all our product announcements.) All of it is designed to make your relationships with customers even stronger—with the content and context of customer conversations at the forefront.
Insights from our partners and customers
One of the very best parts of Zendesk Relate 2022 was talking to our customers and partners, both as we filmed segments and met in person. Here’s what just a few shared.
Picking up where you leave off with Groupon
In the “Deliver fast, personalized service at scale” session, Sonja Carter, senior director of engineering at Groupon, says one of the biggest opportunities they saw in a messaging platform was the ways they were able to engage their customers. “We really wanted to meet the customer where they were.”
Carter gives the example of a customer who might be interested in purchasing SeaWorld tickets, but they get a call and have to walk away for two hours. “When you come back and you’re talking to us via messaging, you have the opportunity to start the conversation where you left off. And regardless if it’s the same agent or a different agent, we know what you’re looking for based on your prior conversation.”
Carter shares that Groupon created a bot to help bring about swift resolutions to customer questions.
Solving for a cohesive sales approach with UpStack
Yossi Mlynsky, founder and CEO of UpStack, a software company that aims to continually streamline and optimize the entire IT procurement experience, said they were struggling for a cohesive sales approach where everyone had clarity and visibility.
In the “Extend conversational experiences to your sales team” session, Mlynsky says, “Deals were falling through the cracks. It was hard to know that we even had a problem, let alone what we needed to do to fix things.” They had tried, of course, spreadsheets. And even evaluated dozens of other tools, says Mlynsky. “We had tried everything.” Ultimately they were pleased to find that Zendesk Sell was an “easy, user-friendly experience.”
How SMC Corporation serves internal customers
“We’re able to adapt and adopt different processes all in the same platform,” says Michael Loggins, global vice president of IT at SMC Corporation of America, a leader in pneumatic technology with offices and factories in over 80 countries, with 25,000 employees. In the “Scale with the power of Sunshine” session, Loggins shares how SMC started using Zendesk when it was still very small and it needed to get rid of a home-built ticketing system. “It had just become so hard for everyone to use that no one wanted to use it.”
The company started out with a small IT team using and succeeding with Zendesk. The success subsequently got the attention of several other business units.
“We’re seeing several things,” says Loggins. “We’re seeing our customers more satisfied. We see the ability for our sales staff and our management staff to have conversations internally and externally about process improvement. That also allows our agents to feel more confident in the work that they’re providing.”
For more insights and a peek into the event, check out this short recap:
How to watch
If you’re playing catch-up, you can register to watch and plan your event journey with our digital event guide. (It even includes a recipe for our official event cocktail, the “So Berry Relatable.”)
If you’re new to Zendesk, we invite you to start with track one, which includes key introductory sessions into Zendesk for service, sales, and to support the employee experience. If you’re looking for Relate-able customer stories and information about what’s new in the product, begin with track three.
And no matter what, I’d encourage you to tune in to track two—which we like to refer to as “thought leadership for thoughtful minds:”
- Our CTO Adrian McDermott reveals his “big bets” on critical areas within the customer experience for future success.
- We learn from Ada how to create successful automated experiences that feel more human, and from MaestroQA how to scale your customer service experiences without sacrificing the quality.
- Finally, we lean on our company value of “humblidence” as our SVP of Global Advocacy Caitlin Keohane and VP of customer advocacy Zoe Coven share tactical tips on how to design a customer-first service organization, including some lessons learned firsthand. If you’re considering undertaking a transformation or a radical service design change, whether you’re thinking about the employee experience or how to lean into conversational experiences and messaging, this session will help you navigate the exciting changes to come.
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Join us for some relate-able customer stories, best practices, and industry hot takes—everything you need to reimagine and elevate your customer experience.
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Join us for some relate-able customer stories, best practices, and industry hot takes—everything you need to reimagine and elevate your customer experience.
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