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Zendesk’s 2020 Messaging Report reveals focus on mobile and LatAm growth

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Zendesk’s VP of Conversational Business, Warren Levitan.

 

The international CRM giant Zendesk released its Annual State of Messaging Report 2020 last month providing key data and insights on the most important conversational business and messaging trends ahead. The coming months will see core expansion in the global messaging landscape with strong advances ahead for the industry in mobile, integrated resorts and Latin American expansion, as messaging finally moves beyond boundaries according to Zendesk’s VP of Conversational Business, Warren Levitan.

In 2019, the number of messages exchanged between businesses and customers on Zendesk’s Sunshine Conversations platform increased 500%, and if the data revealed in the company’s third annual State of Messaging report is anything to go by, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the year ahead. “2020 will be the year of connecting conversations in the enterprise,” explained Warren Levitan. “We are seeing businesses embrace messaging as a shared platform for customer engagement, allowing them to truly unify sales, marketing and service interactions for the first time. This is a massive step toward putting customers at the centre of our businesses.”

Zendesk’s 2020 report combines interviews with more than two dozen customer experience product, sales, and marketing leaders from companies such as Google, Twitter, Hootsuite, Birchbox, and more, providing a measured analysis on the future of messaging across online, mobile and social platforms. Featuring expert commentary and in-depth analysis alongside original Zendesk research and third-party data, the report provides key insights into how messaging is changing the face of business with some notable parallels with the gaming industry in the coming decade.

As the international gaming industry continues to expand into emerging markets such as Brazil and Argentina, one significant area of focus within the report is that the LatAm region is leading the way. “Latin America – where WhatsApp is queen – is embracing conversational business faster than other regions, with Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa following closely,” states Levitan. “In many developing countries, messaging has leapfrogged web, email, and mobile apps to become the digital commerce channel.”

The companies dominating the messaging landscape and the vast differences between countries and continents when it comes to who is winning the messaging race is just one aspect of the research. 2020 will also see evolving and emerging conversational business trends such as AI, machine learning and in-chat payments unlocking huge opportunities for online brands across all sectors. Facebook has revealed that 150m people on Instagram have a conversation with a business every month and so for gaming brands the focus on in-chat payments is essential going forward.

“In-chat payments may be the key to unlocking conversational commerce at scale in the west,” Levitan added. “Apple Business Chat has Apple Pay built in and Facebook has several projects in the works with WhatsApp Pay, Facebook Pay and, most controversially, Libra — its planned cryptocurrency. Kakao, Line, and Telegram also boast their own crypto coins in various stages of development. Buying stuff is a crucial part of the conversational customer journey and it’s about to get a whole lot easier.”

Over the past decade, messaging has fundamentally changed the way people interact with friends, family, colleagues, and companies. According to Business Insider, messaging apps have surpassed social media in global monthly active users. Since 2018, nearly every major messaging channel, including WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Google’s RCS, and Apple’s iMessage, has extended beyond the consumer to businesses. At the same time, businesses of all sizes in every industry have embedded modern messaging experiences into their own apps and websites.

Speaking as part of Zendesk’s 2020 report, Rob Lawson, Global Partnerships, Google, explained: “We’ll start to see the pendulum swing from customer care being the primary driver for business messages towards marketing, lead generation and sales. To date we’ve seen businesses primarily motivated by reducing call centre costs and frustrations for existing customers. In 2020 we’ll see increasing activity from brands deploying conversational techniques to engage new customers and drive incremental business value.”

Bringing the report’s focus back to gaming and integrated resorts, recent data from global research and advisory firm Gartner predicts that by 2022, 70% of all customer interactions will involve emerging tools like chatbots, machine learning, and mobile messaging, up from 15% in 2018. The impact of this for the land-based sector will be keenly felt as Zendesk’s report highlights how live chat remains an effective channel for real-time conversations and a growing number of hotels, resorts and other customer-centric brands are creating bespoke messaging experiences within their mobile apps and websites.

Warren Levitan, VP Conversational Business, Zendesk, added: “Intent and sentiment engines will be connected to every messaging channel, with businesses intelligently routing each message to the right system and person or bot. Once messaging penetrates the business, we will see that it knows no boundaries.“

To read Zendesk’s full interactive State of Messaging 2020 report, visit: zendesk.com/message/state-of-messaging-2020/

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Golden Entertainment Announces Leadership Changes

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Golden Entertainment Announces Leadership Changes

 

Golden Entertainment Inc. announced that effective March 20, 2024, Blake Sartini II, Golden’s Executive Vice President of Operations, became the Company’s Chief Operating Officer.

“Blake has worked in every capacity throughout our organization since he started at Golden almost 17 years ago. His unique knowledge of our Company’s culture, commitment to operational excellence, and strong leadership skills make him the ideal individual to be given responsibility for all our Nevada casino resorts, locals properties, tavern operations and related corporate functions,” Blake Sartini, Chairman and CEO of Golden, said.

Blake Sartini II initially joined Golden in June 2007, working with Golden’s tavern operations and building what is now the largest branded tavern portfolio in Nevada with 69 locations. Currently, as Executive Vice President of Operations, in addition to oversight of Golden’s taverns, he has direct responsibility for the Company’s five local casinos in Las Vegas and Pahrump.

Steve Arcana, Golden’s current Chief Operating Officer, became the Company’s Chief Development Officer also effective March 20, 2024. In this newly created role, Mr. Arcana will be responsible for all new tavern development, finding new third-party food and beverage concepts for the Company’s casino resorts, and exploring opportunities to unlock value in the Company’s excess real estate in Las Vegas, Laughlin and Pahrump. Mr. Arcana initially joined Golden in 2003 and has overseen the Company’s operations as it has grown from a privately held, 900-slot machine route operation to a publicly traded gaming company with casinos in Las Vegas, Laughlin and Pahrump in addition to its significant tavern portfolio.

“Steve has been with Golden for over 20 years and has been an integral part of growing our business and guiding us through many challenges. Steve has established a strong operating team and has been a consistent leader throughout his decades at Golden. His long history and extensive experience in the industry will continue to benefit the Company in his new role focused on creating value from new tavern development and unused assets in our casino portfolio,” Mr. Sartini said.

“These management changes will allow Golden to focus on maximizing performance in our core operations while exploring opportunities to drive future improvement by bringing potential new concepts to our existing portfolio. I am confident the changes to Blake and Steve’s roles with the Company will position us well to create additional shareholder value,” Mr. Sartini added.

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MGM Resorts International Announces Proposed Senior Notes Offering

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MGM Resorts International Announces Proposed Senior Notes Offering

 

MGM Resorts International announced that it proposes to offer $750,000,000 in aggregate principal amount of senior notes due 2032.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering of the notes to repay existing indebtedness, including its outstanding 6.750% senior notes due 2025. Pending such use, the Company may invest the net proceeds in short-term interest-bearing accounts, securities, or similar investments.

The notes being offered will be general unsecured senior obligations of the Company, guaranteed by substantially all of the Company’s wholly-owned domestic subsidiaries that guarantee the Company’s other senior indebtedness, and equal in right of payment with all existing or future senior unsecured indebtedness of the Company and each guarantor.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., BofA Securities, Inc., Barclays Capital Inc., BNP Paribas Securities Corp., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Citizens JMP Securities, LLC, Fifth Third Securities, Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Scotia Capital (USA) Inc., SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc., and Truist Securities, Inc. will act as joint book-running managers and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, PNC Capital Markets LLC, U.S. Bancorp Investments, Inc., and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC will act as co-managers for the proposed offering.

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Penn Entertainment Names Anuj Dhanda to Board of Directors

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Penn Entertainment Names Anuj Dhanda to Board of Directors

 

PENN Entertainment announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Anuj Dhanda to the Board, subject to customary regulatory approvals. Mr. Dhanda’s appointment expands the size of the Board to ten members, nine of whom satisfy the standards for director independence under the current Listing Rules of the NASDAQ Stock Market.

Mr. Dhanda serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology and Transformation Officer for Albertsons, a Fortune 100 Idaho-based chain of grocery stores with locations across the US. He joined Albertsons in 2015 in the midst of the company’s $9 billion acquisition of the Safeway grocery store chain. He was responsible for successfully merging the two companies’ technology platforms together. In his current role, he partners with business leaders to leverage technology to create a competitive advantage for the company. He is responsible for IT architecture, application platforms, supply chain modernization, data analytics, infrastructure and information security. He has also been the driver behind the company’s move to the cloud, making Albertsons one of the few enterprise businesses to have completely migrated their data centers to the Cloud. Mr. Dhanda is also focused on the acceleration of the business through the use of AI.

Prior to joining Albertsons, Mr. Dhanda was Sr. Vice President of Digital Commerce and CIO at Giant Eagle, a leading retailer in the Midwest, where he was accountable for managing all aspects of technology apps, architecture, infrastructure and more. Additionally, Mr. Dhanda held CIO roles at PNC Financial Services for nearly 15 years.

Mr. Dhanda has been active in numerous professional and philanthropic causes including the CIO Council for Greylock; President’s Council for Oracle; former Chairman of the Board at the Mattress Factory Museum; board member at Carnegie Museum of Art; and board member of United Way of Allegheny County. He has also served on the Board of BlueLinx (NYSE BXC) since May 2023. Mr. Dhanda has been recognized by CIO100 and was an honoree of the CIO Hall of Fame in 2019. He received both his MBA and Ph.D. in Finance from Rutgers University.

Marla Kaplowitz, Chair of PENN’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of the Board of Directors, said: “We are delighted to welcome Anuj to the Board. He is a well-respected technology leader in the consumer space and is known for building powerful and collaborative teams. His deep understanding of the rapidly evolving technology landscape, including topics such as AI and cybersecurity, will be a tremendous resource for us as we continue to evolve our business around an omnichannel retail and interactive gaming, sports betting and entertainment experience for our industry leading database of customers.”

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