Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat that I had with Tom Eggemeier, the Chief Executive Officer of Zendesk, following the conclusion of Zendesk’s recent AI Summit. We talk about the highlights from the event, what’s different from what they announced at Relate back in March, how they now have 20,000 customers using their AI and where they are seeing the fastest and most effective adoption, their recent acquisition of HyperArc and what it will bring to their platform in terms of advanced reporting, analytics and insights, the launch of their voice AI agents and a whole bunch of other things, including an intriguing idea of how for some innovative brabds the application of AI is creating a ‘service dividend.’

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The terms deflection and containment should be banned – Interviews from Cisco’s WebexOne – and is number 559 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Tom:

• We will also finish the year with about 20,000 customers using our AI. That’s both paid and unpaid.
• We’re going to do 800 billion API requests this year, and we’re on pace for probably one trillion next year.
• Here’s a summary of the announcements:
  • The company has launched an early access program for voice AI agents that can resolve complex issues. Their knowledge connectors and knowledge builder are now generally available with enhancements, including the ability to create knowledge articles from tickets and industry data. They also acquired HyperArk, a company specializing in advanced reporting analytics and insights.
  • Further announcements include the launch of admin co-pilot and the general availability of no-code tools like Action Builder and App Builder. New contact center capabilities have been introduced, including video calling and screen sharing in early access, and voice AI agents are now integrated into the Zendesk contact center.
  • Finally, advancements in employee service include the native integration of IT asset management early access for full visibility into company issues and device usage for quicker IT resolution. A service catalog and Microsoft Copilot integration have also been launched, bringing direct integration into Microsoft 365.
• We got an award from OpenAI recently as we actually surpassed one trillion tokens with them. They’ve had less than 20 companies in their history do one trillion tokens.
• We are seeing 20 % less passes to a human agent when we were AB testing ChatGPT5 versus ChatGPT40 in terms of our AI agents. So, with ChatGPT5 we’re seeing much better resolution rates.
• We think this is going to be like a five to seven-year transition in AI with respect to customer support.
• However, for most people that transition will be crawl, walk, run.
• One of the things we’ve noticed at Zendesk is we need to get our partners or our services team more involved because a lot of our customers are saying, there’s so much coming at me, can you walk me through this?
• We see three parts to that journey:
  • Number one, you just go look at knowledge and conversations, and we see customers go very quickly to 30% automation rates through self-service generative search and what we call AI agents essentials, where you’re just using knowledge.
  • Second kind of phase is go, how do we go analyze tickets and go take that knowledge and go from like 30 to 50 or 60%.
  • The third part is where we’re guiding people through the journey to how do you go start using the 800 billion API requests so every customer can start plugging into and connecting other systems to actually take action.
• Conversations, tickets, and then really plugging in.
• Some companies are going to take the cost savings that come from the application of AI to the bottom line. But, I’ve actually seen some of the most innovative brands in the world and they’re saying we’re going to view those cost savings as a service dividend and we’re going to make the service experience even better because we think it’s going to create a loyalty loop.
• Tom’s best advice: Make sure you work with your vendor really, really closely on a joint roadmap and really put your North Star and envision what you’re trying to accomplish up front and march towards that.
• Tom’s Punk CX brand: Zendesk (obvs) as well as bunch of their customers who are doing some really innovative things.

About Tom

Tom Eggemeier, is the CEO of Zendesk, and a member of the board.

Most recently, Tom was a partner at the private equity firm Permira, where he was the head of the Menlo Park office and focused on investing and value creation in the Technology sector. In addition to the Zendesk board, Tom serves on the boards of Axiom, G2, Seismic, and Mimecast. Prior to joining Permira, Tom was the President of Genesys, a Permira fund portfolio company and global leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact center software. During his more than ten-year tenure with Genesys, he focused on developing and implementing strategic and operational initiatives aimed at driving value creation across the business. Tom’s previous global experience includes working in Paris, France for almost five years along with over 20 years operational experience in the technology sector leading teams from sales to research and development.

Tom holds a B.A. from the University of Dayton and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

Tom and his family live in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. He enjoys traveling, reading history books, and following the University of Dayton Flyers basketball team.

Credit: Photo by rc.xyz NFT gallery on Unsplash