Zendesk Sunshine Consulting & Development

As ex-Zendesk employees and authorized Zendesk implementation partners, we at Helpando always get excited when Zendesk releases a new feature. When Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane introduced Sunshine at the Relate 2018 event, we were sitting in the front rows and felt first-hand that this was not just another “feature” being added to the platform.

With Sunshine, Zendesk became an open CRM platform. As Zendesk puts it, it lets you connect and understand all your customer data—wherever it may live—and use it across your business.

What is Zendesk Sunshine?

Zendesk Sunshine is an open, flexible CRM platform built natively on a public cloud. Rather than locking your customer data inside rigid ticket fields, Sunshine lets you model custom objects, store events and interaction history, and connect data from any system your business uses. The result is a unified view of the customer that agents and automations can act on. We’ve written a deeper explainer on what Zendesk Sunshine is, and gathered practical Zendesk Sunshine use cases to inspire support leaders with ideas for how to put it to work.

What we build with Sunshine

What really excites us is building custom solutions on top of Sunshine for our clients. Typical projects include:

• Custom objects & data models — representing orders, subscriptions, devices, policies, or any entity your support team needs context on.
• System integrations — pulling and pushing data between Zendesk and your internal databases, applications, or third-party APIs.
• Middleware services — when native functionality isn’t enough, we build secure web services to bridge the gap.
• Unified customer profiles — surfacing the right data inside the agent workspace so every conversation has full context.
• Event-driven automation — using Sunshine events to trigger workflows across your support operation.

Our approach

Every Sunshine project is bespoke, but our process is straightforward:

1. Discover. We get together and talk about how you currently use Zendesk — the lifecycle of a typical ticket, the channels you use, and where things slow down. Every time we hear “it would be great if…”, that’s where we dig deeper to see what can be improved.
2. Design. After the scoping call, we discuss what your implementation needs. Can we build it with what’s natively available in Zendesk, or do we need a middleware web service? If you have an internal database or application, is there an API we can use to pull and push data? Can we reuse apps we’ve built before, or public marketplace apps, to save effort?
3. Quote & build. We send you a ballpark quote together with a clear implementation plan, then build, test, and hand over with documentation.

Why Helpando for Sunshine

Sunshine development sits at the intersection of customer support and software engineering — exactly where Helpando lives. As ex-Zendesk staff and an authorized implementation partner working since 2013, we understand both the platform’s internals and the support workflows it serves. Sunshine work also pairs naturally with our custom Zendesk apps and development and data migration services, so we can deliver an end-to-end solution rather than an isolated build.

Book a free Sunshine scoping call

We offer a free scoping call for anyone who wants to talk about Zendesk Sunshine. During this call we’ll explore if and how your business can benefit from Sunshine, and what an implementation might involve.