Zendesk launches its open and flexible CRM platform on AWS

Zendesk has launched Sunshine, an open and flexible customer relationship management (CRM) platform built completely in the public cloud on Amazon Web Services. Zendesk Sunshine enables businesses to connect and understand all their customer data, wherever it lives, and gives their developers the ability to build and deploy customer apps and services faster. Sunshine is built entirely on open standards, with the security, scalability and reliability of AWS built into its core.

Sunshine launches with powerful capabilities including Profiles, Events and Custom Objects that allow customers to store and connect to all their customer data. With Profiles, businesses can create a single, unified view of the customer across all applications. Using Events, companies can capture any customer activity such as customer service interactions, website visits, purchase transactions, and shipping history in a historical timeline. Custom Objects allows companies to collect additional relevant information like products owned, equipment rented, or even telemetrics from a connected car from outside sources, then store this data directly within Zendesk.

Zendesk launched Sunshine, as well as a new sales force automation tool, Zendesk Sell, and the data analytics product, Zendesk Explore, at its global user conference, Relate 2018, taking place this week in San Francisco.

“It’s time to break free from CRM platforms that think they’re the centre of the universe and lock you into an outdated view of the world,” said Mikkel Svane, Zendesk Founder & CEO. “We built Sunshine to shed light on the many different dimensions of customers and their data, while giving developers the freedom to build the way they want in the public cloud.”

“The Zendesk platform gives us the ability to adapt to our customers’ changing needs and expectations,” said Gerardo Soto, Director of Innovation at Stanley Black & Decker. "Our developers also see tremendous value in the possibility of using the open-source tools they already know and love on AWS, which would ultimately serve our customers and the business better.”

Zendesk Sell is a new sales force automation (SFA) tool built to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for sales teams. Sell marks the first step in integrating SFA software into the Zendesk family of products.

With Sell, information will be able to flow seamlessly between support and sales on the Sunshine CRM platform, resulting in a single conversation with customers and better alignment between teams.

As data and analytics become increasingly important to how businesses build and scale personal, connected experiences for their customers, Zendesk also announced the general availability of its data analytics tool, Explore. Integrating seamlessly with all of its products, Zendesk Explore makes it easier for companies to see and analyze data across all Zendesk support channels.