Transcend integrates with Zendesk to automate privacy requests by orchestrating customer data

Transcend announces its integration with Zendesk, the global customer service platform. For many companies, the day-to-day privacy operations of fulfilling data and deletion requests often fall to customer support teams to manually handle inbound tickets, data collection across systems, and customer resolution.

The release of this integration eliminates that manual work for companies using Transcend and Zendesk in tandem.

“Our customers now have a far easier way of meeting consumer privacy obligations such as those outlined in Europe’s GDPR, California’s Consumer Privacy Act, and more, in the most efficient way possible — simply by connecting their Zendesk instance directly to Transcend’s privacy automation platform,” said Zendesk’s VP of Technology Alliances Pascal Pettinicchio.

Zendesk customers can now quickly fulfill privacy requests across their entire digital footprint, including all Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and internal databases. Companies can delete personal data across both structured and unstructured data and orchestrate data actions such as access, deletion, opt-out, and more across the billions of emails, support tickets, chat messages, and Help Center comments powered through Zendesk’s platform.

Importantly, Transcend’s Zendesk integration allows companies to streamline end-to-end privacy request fulfillment from authenticating the end user to automated data orchestration, including data held in their Zendesk instance.

“Zendesk is leading the internet in bringing powerful, service-first tools for businesses to build trustworthy customer relationships. We’re thrilled to be their partner of choice to help extend that commitment to the delivery of consumers’ data rights everywhere, all while providing secure, scalable data privacy processing across technical environments and regulatory requirements,” said Transcend CEO Ben Brook.

“Our customers rely on us to deliver great service to their customers. Transcend’s Zendesk integration now unlocks a frictionless experience for their customer’s access, deletion, or other control of their data, as mandated by a rapidly-increasing number of state and global privacy laws,” said Pettinicchio.

Putting a highly manual process on autopilot

In a typical company reliant on manual processes for completing consumer privacy requests, customer support teams often bear the brunt of processing privacy requests, including logging incoming requests, verifying a person’s identity and eligibility based on state laws, tracking down data across a company’s data stack, and then actioning the request — whether it be deleting data across systems or returning data.

Data discovery is especially difficult with unstructured data, such as free-form customer responses. In this scenario, a simple search or even an SQL query may not be enough to pinpoint the correct data points, creating the need for manual investigation and review.

Transcend’s research finds that companies with even the most minimal request volumes lose on average one week across teams per month with manual processes. Additionally, companies face significant security risks, including the potential for invalid authentication, human errors in data packaging, and failure to fully execute deletion across the entire required tech stack.

Conversely, automated solutions replace manual steps by connecting a customer-facing, self-serve privacy request UI with dispersed company data systems — leaving CX teams with the more manageable task of monitoring the platform and troubleshooting rare, one-off issues.