deltastring weekly
Zendesk news and incisive views
This week
Welcome to the first edition of this newsletter. If you find it useful, forward it to other people who would find it useful. If you expected something different, let me know! You can reply to this email or use Linkedin. Thanks!
It's a bank holiday weekend here in the UK, so I'm wrapping up for the week a little early. I'll be away from my desk, taking pictures of rallycross cars at Lydden Hill for a few days.
There has been plenty to celebrate at Deltastring this week, agreeing contracts with a significant new client and bringing a good dose of new features to our products. Friends across the support SaaS trade have mentioned it has felt like a bit of a difficult period but businesses are now spending again. We're seeing interesting projects get the green light and so if your game is transformational stuff, especially with live channels and AI integrations, there are great opportunities. Go get them!
We're attending Zendesk Showcase London in June and the signup page is here. If you'll be around, let's get some time for a natter in.
What caught our attention
2 sources · general · 2026-04-02
I like that Ikea have named their bot Billy like their bookcases. They report that 47% of inbound chats are completely handled by the bot. If your systems are well connected, surfacing fulfilment information in natural language is straightforward.
1 sources · acquisition,industry · 2026-04-02
We love the clever design decisions of Forethought and clearly Zendesk also see the potential for this product. It had been a while since an AI platform wowed me but Forethought is truly smart. I only worry that Zendesk need to give this team the freedom and resources to stay ahead.
1 sources · general · 2026-04-02
In more and more sectors, the AI buzzword is the way to unlock that investment. Make any project easier for the CEO to approve by pouring on AI. Travel does have straightforward opportunities for AI-based systems though. When people need consistent information across languages, timezones, currency differences, AI can reduce the human overhead.
1 sources · general,community · 2026-04-02
"Experiences with customer support chatbots feel more like deflection than resolution." Please don't get me started on bad bots. Making it painful for the customer to cancel or refund doesn't help anyone.
1 sources · analysis · 2026-04-02
I don't understand why we need a new Wordpress per se. It has been too heavy and clunky forever and anyone can just vibe code a static web template with their own posting workflows for small scale teams. It's definitely time to see Automattic get disrupted after years of being bad internet citizens.
2 sources · analysis · 2026-04-03
This report from Gartner hits all my favourite quadrants. AI isn't about Sam Altman hoovering up all your entry level jobs. It's about releasing your people from the repetitive basics and being human middleware between your disconnected systems.
What we shipped
Zendesk configuration management
| AI-generated summaries now appear in row details for Pro+ users, automatically created during data sync with smart batching and caching for performance. |
| Visual relationship chips replace text lists in row expand, making object connections clearer and easier to scan. |
| Get help button launches consulting requests directly from health issues, streamlining the handoff from Beacon to support teams. |
| Collapsible sidebar with smart auto-hide and mobile overlay keeps more content visible while staying accessible on any device. |
| 8 new Zendesk object types now supported (app installations, webhooks, Talk settings, and more) with automatic product detection to only show relevant data. |
AI-native support platform
| Mute unwanted senders and block spam — You can now silence emails from specific senders and the system automatically detects and filters spam messages. |
| Email digests work correctly — Fixed an issue where emails kept reappearing in your digest after you'd already seen them. |
| Team expertise matching — The system now tracks team member skills and automatically routes work to the right people based on their expertise. |
| Major platform stability overhaul complete — Completed a comprehensive six-phase reliability project covering event handling, data consistency, AI safety, and system migrations. |
CX platform news, aggregated and analysed
| Newsletter launches: Subscribe, confirm, and manage subscriptions on the homepage; past issues archived on the site |
| Broader coverage: Added TechCrunch, Register, and Hacker News feeds; expanded keyword filter to catch AI agents, CCaaS, ServiceNow, and voice AI content |
| Release notes hub: New `/release-notes` page automatically scrapes and organises Zendesk release notes with expanded, summarized, and archive views |
| Source cleanup: Replaced RSS proxy with direct API integrations (Zendesk Help Center and newsroom); normalized YouTube URLs to eliminate duplicates |
| Better discovery: Improved URL resolution for news articles, Slack notifications for new subscribers, and SEO enhancements including sitemaps and NewsArticle schema |
Worth your time
Sweethawk have a lovely Liquid tester added to their suite. Linkedin post here. Liquid is a quick thing to learn and a powerful tool, particularly for Zendesk macro content.
I've been playing with this Kanban for Zendesk app from this Linkedin post and it's refreshing! I was cynical when Andriana started teasing the idea but I take it all back now I've played with it. Smaller teams with low volume but complex workflows will want to check it out.
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What happened in Zendesk this week
Platform changes, security updates, and honest opinions from someone who builds on Zendesk every day. One email, Fridays.
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