From Customer POV to Platform Data - Scaling User Context at Zendesk
Group Product Manager (acting)·Zendesk – Icarus → Platform (Sunshine, Custom Objects, Customer Context)·2020-2021
CX SaaSPlatform Strategy
"It was amazing to partner with you to drive the initial product MVP. You played an important role pushing to clear technical debt and establish key UX! We all appreciate the way you show up for the team and are always so enthusiastic, energetic, and passionate in sharing the team's progress. Your storytelling and presentation skills are something the design and product team have learned a lot from. Thank you for being such an amazing PM to work with."
Product Overview
“This let us model our real business, not just tickets and users.”
Custom Objects gave Zendesk customers the power to store and relate structured data beyond tickets, users, and organizations.
- Partnered with platform and enterprise teams to define MVP object model.
- Ran customer interviews to define top object relationships (e.g., assets, cases, warranties).
- Created developer onboarding and internal enablement content.
- Worked cross-functionally to define permissions, validation rules, and APIs.
Product Goals
How might we help customers model real-world business relationships inside Zendesk?
Enterprise customers needed more flexible ways to track non-ticket data like accounts, subscriptions, or devices. Without Custom Objects, they resorted to awkward workarounds. We aimed to support structured, scalable solutions without sacrificing ease of use.
- Extend Zendesk’s native schema in a stable, performant way.
- Allow object relationships, custom fields, and lightweight logic.
- Deliver a great experience for both admins and developers.
- Drive expansion in high-value verticals like financial services and manufacturing.
Challenges
- Needed to balance flexibility with platform stability.
- Internal teams had conflicting ideas of what “custom” should mean.
- MVP scope risked bloating into a full relational database layer.
- Developer onboarding needed to be dead simple.
Solutions
- Delivered opinionated but extensible object types with relationship mapping.
- Created object explorer UI for admins.
- Defined sample use cases with API references and tutorials.
- Collaborated with support and CX teams to drive beta feedback.
Outcome & Impact
- 240-customer beta program; 55 enterprise accounts ($20M ARR) migrated with low friction
- After the 9-month tech debt refactor, new features shipped in less than half the original build time
- Shipped Custom Objects Admin UI with schema builder, 6 object templates, bulk CRUD, and relationship permissions
- Managed ~18 engineers + managers + designers across 3 teams as acting group PM
- Built Unified Fields Management reusable across both standard and custom objects
- 6-29% Agent Workspace performance improvement during migration support of 75 enterprise accounts
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