The immense surge in the adoption of digital technologies and ecommerce means consumers now have extensive access to a variety of products and services at the click of a button.
In order to gain and retain customers, it is essential that businesses prioritise the customer experience.
Zendesk is a leading provider of customer experience software solutions, which are used by more than 750 South African companies, including Takealot, Massmart, Rain, and Virgin Money South Africa.
Zendesk Enterprise Account Executive for South Africa Maxime Blanchard said Zendesk puts digital agility and flexibility at the forefront of its offerings, which is exactly what businesses need to keep customers happy and grow over the long-term.
“The revolution is now, and it’s super-fast, which means there is a need to move from solutions that are rigid to something that has to be extremely agile,” Blanchard states.
Rapid deployment
Blanchard said many South African companies are heavily impacted by elaborate and outdated approaches to digital transformation – which can span over months.
“Unfortunately, because of a purposeful lack of education from these legacy system providers, digital transformation projects are long, tedious, and heavy,” Blanchard said.
Over time, the rand has also weakened, which means projects ended up costing much more than businesses had budgeted for.
Senior Account Executive at Zendesk Diarmuid Aherne explained that Zendesk’s solutions are not susceptible to this, as they can be deployed rapidly.
“We can get companies up and running on an omni-channel CX solution very quickly, whether that’s for your mom-and-pop-type of shop, all the way up to enterprise customers,” Aherne said.
Zendesk’s omni-channel solution also addresses South African companies’ extensive use of legacy communication systems like telephonic voice.
“It acts as a layer of aggregation that makes sense of the beautiful mess of legacy systems,” Blanchard explained.
This creates a simplified, unified, and centralised overview of customer information and interactions across both new and old channels, providing the opportunity to construct reports of the wider customer experience.
Customers and partners
Aherne emphasised that Zendesk prides itself on the value it is able to show its customers from a return on investment and total cost of ownership point-of-view.
“We want to make sure they feel like we are essentially partnering with them to see success over a short period of time, and in building that long-term relationship,” Aherne said.
Blanchard explained to achieve this in South Africa, Zendesk works with local business partners to act as intermediaries to its customers to help drive the three core values of flexibility, guidance and local presence.
This ensures that end users are getting the right solution, explained to them on the ground in a familiar language and manner.
Zendesk Roadshow Africa
Zendesk will hold its Roadshow Africa virtual event on 15 September 2020.
This is the ideal opportunity to learn more about the changing state of CX and ecommerce in Africa, as well as how Zendesk’s products address this.
Click here to register for the Zendesk Roadshow Africa event now.
Meet the team
Maxime Blanchard, Territory Manager
Maxime has been with Zendesk for over 3 years and leads Zendesk’s vision and strategy for South Africa.
In a former life he was an elite professional footballer, where he developed strong values around commitment, high performance and perseverance.
He is passionate about helping businesses in SA achieve their potential, and materialise their CX vision.
Diarmuid Aherne, Senior Account Executive
Diarmuid has extended knowledge of the world of Customer Experience.
Having worked in the UK market with Oracle for nearly 3 years and the Middle East with Salesforce for 5, he has guided major brands shift their attention to their customers.
Now at Zendesk he’s excited to work with South African companies and give them the flexibility to move quickly, focus on innovation, and scale with their growth.
This article was published in partnership with Zendesk.