RingCentral’s latest addition to its customer contact capabilities is Zendesk Talk Partner Edition (TPE) for RingEX.

The offer, which integrates Zendesk’s customer contact platform with RingCentral’s RingEX employee communications platform, leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to provide greater detail of and insights into customer calls.

One positive feature of the offer is that a caller’s incoming phone number and contact details are instantly matched to their existing call records, which are then automatically displayed, making interaction with the customer much more personalised. Another useful feature is that trouble tickets are created automatically when a call arrives, and users can log a call’s details directly within the ticket; centralising all information in this way allows for faster decision-making and follow-up.

The most intriguing aspect of the offer is its target audience, namely employees such as sales and marketing personnel who sit outside the contact centre yet are still directly customer-impacting. Not only does this enable a broader base of an organisation to positively influence the customer experience, it also follows the lead established by some of RingCentral’s rivals such as Cisco.

Zendesk TPE for RingEX also serves as a nice complement to other RingCentral contact centre capabilities that were announced in August 2024. AI Agent Assist provides agents with in-call contextual responses to customer queries in real-time; AI Supervisor Assist monitors live customer interactions and identifies potential issues requiring supervisor attention; AI Coaching Insights analyses customer interactions for each agent and generates personalised coaching suggestions; and the Bring-Your-Own IVA Framework allows customers to integrate their preferred intelligent virtual agent (IVA) for self-service across voice and digital channels.

Zendesk is on trend

Like its late-summer brethren, looking at Zendesk TPE for RingEX at a macro level reveals that RingCentral is hewing closely with two important trends as it continues filling out its contact centre expertise.

The first trend is centred on AI. Virtually overnight, AI has become an integral component of contact centres. Since the onset of the pandemic, contact centres have become permeated with AI. AI is leveraged to provide a customer experience marked by the provision of self-service capabilities and the proactive recognition of customer needs to resolve issues within their preferred channels of engagement. AI also feeds the agent experience, reserving agents' time for addressing complex customer inquiries and equipping them with the knowledge required to fulfill those inquiries. In addition, AI is foundational to the emergence of digital-first strategies, the hallmark of which is delivering data-driven customer experiences.