Today at its flagship global conference, Relate, Zendesk, Inc. unveiled Conversational Commerce, designed to connect brands with shoppers throughout their digital customer experience (CX) journey in order to provide direct support, marketing, and sales all from within a conversation.

The new Conversational Commerce capabilities equip companies with:

• Service personalization: Agents can action abandoned carts, support active carts, inform customers on nearby stock to complete purchases, and share feature promotions in the moment to create stellar personalized experiences.
• Sales acceleration: Agents can identify new revenue opportunities by understanding any shopper’s complete purchase history, merchandise preferences and browsing journey to drive new options through rich product recommendations for cross-sell and upsell, increasing overall order value.
• Unified data at scale: Businesses can use AI to automate conversions and recommendations supported by over 1,400 pre-built apps and integrations that can unify SKU, inventory and location data for seamless product tracking, or connect disparate systems for a 360 view of the customer.

“While we’ve seen huge shifts in the way people shop over the past few years, one thing has remained constant – people prefer to communicate via messaging,” said Adrian McDermott, CTO, Zendesk. “Now that digital is the new storefront, businesses will be able to use Conversational Commerce, built on our powerful messaging platform, to create a richer, more dynamic and interactive experience with their customers, which will ultimately lead to increased loyalty and revenue.”

Powerful integrations connect shoppers and businesses

Zendesk is deepening its partnerships with Meta’s WhatsApp and Shopify, to further enhance businesses’ CX strategies and empower them to create a better shopping journey for their customers.

The combination of Zendesk and Meta’s WhatsApp will give businesses the ability to communicate with customers and offer a buying experience without ever having to leave the conversation.

Zendesk’s Conversational Commerce and Shopify’s ecommerce platform allow agents to incorporate product catalogs, checkout processes and promotions into their CX management approaches.

“Shopify is committed to providing merchants with the tools they need to succeed in the competitive commerce landscape,” said Sid Murlidhar, Director of Product Partnerships at Shopify. “We’re excited to expand our partnership with Zendesk to offer our merchants a simpler way to connect and engage with customers.”

Customers expect convenient interactions

Customer expectations for seamless purchasing processes are rising, and businesses are increasingly training their support agents to take on revenue generation activities. In fact, the Zendesk 2023 CX Trends Report said 70% of customers expect conversational experiences when interacting with brands. Additionally, 70% of customers purchase more from companies that offer seamless, conversational experiences.

Foot Locker has always been at the forefront of innovation, and their partnership with Zendesk messaging technology is no exception. With a focus on creating a digital shopping experience that is just as inspiring as their in-store experience, Foot Locker is dedicated to providing a seamless, connected journey for customers across all touch points. By collaborating with Zendesk, the brand is positioning themselves to proactively engage and inspire all of their customers to unlock their “Inner Sneakerhead.”

“We’re excited to be partnering with Zendesk to look at new ways to improve the shopping experience across our digital and physical footprint,” said John Wompey, Global VP Omni CX & Voice of the Customer, Foot Locker. “With conversational commerce we hope to provide our customers with an educated buying experience where commercial transactions create an engaging and individual experience.”

The beta program for Zendesk Conversational Commerce is available now, and is expected to be generally available in the coming months. To learn more, visit zendesklabs.zendesk.com.

About Zendesk
Zendesk is on a mission to simplify the complexity of business and make it easy for companies and customers to create connections. Our customer experience software unlocks the power of billions of interactions, enabling businesses to build rich, meaningful relationships with their customers. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark and today operates in more than 20 countries around the world. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.