Efficiency and automation key as Zendesk simplifies customer service

With the igaming industry experiencing rapid international growth, nurturing brand identity and loyalty remains a key focus for operators – a complex challenge when faced with an increasingly diverse customer base. Speaking at the customer service software company Zendesk’s Showcase London, the firm’s president of products Adrian McDermott discussed how Zendesk’s segmentation and automation software is leading the way for efficient B2C interaction.

“Gaming has a set of unique challenges,” said McDermott. “Most games have large populations of casual users, free users, paid users, heavy users, and segmentation of inbound – and understanding how to deal with that inbound – is incredibly important.”

“We have gaming customers that have hundreds of millions of free users they need to serve through self service, and we have gaming customers with some very high-spend individuals, and they need to treat those people differently.”
One of the first things Zendesk offers gaming firms is a self-service environment where users can help users, or access appropriate content, with Harvard Business Review recently stating that 81 percent of people would rather find the answer for themselves than seek assistance. Further stages include an escalation from that channel into an instant messaging environment where customers talk directly to an agent, with an establishment of user identity.

The automated process, which also utilises AI and extensively curated user help functions, allows brands to streamline the customer service response, effectively allowing them to more efficiently utilise customer-facing agents. “Ultimately, serving gaming customers is often about having humans sitting in seats talking to humans who play that game, engaging with them and representing the brand.”

“Our gaming customers bring that to bear themselves, we just give them the tools, and build best practices in, that when a player comes for support, they get a response which is timely, in brand and meets their expectations.”

Not only did Zendesk’s Showcase London offer a positive opportunity to engage with firms keen to integrate the firm’s efficient software systems, but the 12 June event also proved the perfect place to announce an expansion of Zendesk’s AI-powered Answer Bot.

Already embedded in over 10,000 apps, Answer Bot tool will now be extended across all web and mobile channels, allowing companies to provide constant, consistent support and quicker response times across all platforms. “Customers today demand fast responses in a context that suits them, and AI can be used to help companies be more timely and accurate when engaging with customers. With Answer Bot, we’re putting an end to laborious processes to resolve simple questions. We’re not just delivering self-service everywhere – we’re delivering AI-powered self-service everywhere, which will continue to make for a better customer experience.”

Alongside Answer Bot – which also surfaces recommendations to agents during customer interaction, thereby increasing accuracy in response – Zendesk also announced a range of new tools as part of its Guide Enterprise knowledge base. With nearly four billion knowledge base articles viewed on Zendesk in 2018, the firm’s curated catalogue of problem solving and FAQ response articles has been strengthened with solutions such as Article Events – allowing regular appraisals of the usefulness, brand consistency and accuracy of articles – and Content Cues, prioritising the most regularly viewed responses. “This is what AI can do; large-scale pattern matching that goes beyond human comprehension,” said McDermott. “One of the reasons we’re super excited about this is that we are seeing that new capabilities across gaming are being released every month, every quarter, they’re entertainment products unlike any before, they are constantly morphing.”

“This is a challenge for customer service, figuring out the connotations downstream of what’s going to happen to a player in that new reality – it’s almost impossible to be figuring it out without machine automation. It’s uniquely suited to the pace of game deployment.”

Though igaming firms are just waking up to the potential of streamlined customer service software, McDermott added that Zendesk’s experience with gaming firms already extends over seven years, with key integrations in major studios and providers delivering manifold efficiencies. With its suite of systems and software covering consumer-engaged businesses in all sectors, Zendesk offers one of the most multi-faceted B2C solutions on the market, a serious consideration for igaming operators as both product options and customer numbers increase.

“We provide the tools and services to people to help them provide great customer service, and that cuts across all kinds of industries, ecommerce, traditional retail, services IT – and of course gaming.”

“We have a range of products that help people connect with their customers, and we always say that the best customer experiences are built with Zendesk.”