Founded in 2007, Zendesk has been around the longest of the customer support tools, and has become the 800 pound Gorilla of the customer support world. While it is feature rich, it is less intuitive than our recommended tool (Gorgias) and requires more development resources to set up and optimize. Users described Zendesk as a large enterprise tool with lots of tech debt and various functions kluged on. People also complained about the support that Zendesk offers. You would think that a company offering customer support software would have excellent support, but unfortunately, that isn't the case with Zendesk. If you happen to be doing business for the government and restricted by FedRAMP approved SaaS, then Zendesk is your only solution right now.
Read our full guide on: Customer Support Platforms 🙏
Best for: Medium ($10-50M revenue) and Enterprise ($50M+ revenue) size companies.
Zendesk is a customer support platform that helps companies manage customer support tickets and communication.
Zendesk, founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark, emerged as a lean startup by three friends: Morten Primdahl, Alexander Aghassipour, and Mikkel Svane. The company's journey began in Svane's loft, where they developed the Zendesk software. Facing initial challenges, the founders funded the startup through consulting jobs while steadily gaining trial customers. In 2009, venture capital investors prompted Zendesk to relocate to the United States. The company's pivotal moments include raising significant funding, transitioning to the U.S., and experiencing rapid growth. Over the years, Zendesk evolved its software, expanded internationally, went public in 2014, and achieved annual revenues of $500 million by 2018, marking a remarkable trajectory from its humble origins to a global customer service platform.
Messaging
Zendesk's messaging platform facilitates real-time communication between businesses and their customers. This feature enables conversational interactions through various channels, including chat and messaging. It allows support agents to engage with customers in a personalized manner, addressing queries, resolving issues, and providing assistance in real-time. The messaging platform is designed for efficiency, ensuring that businesses can offer timely responses and maintain a continuous conversation with their customers. It enhances customer experience by offering a more immediate and convenient channel for communication.
Inbox
Zendesk's Inbox offering provides a unified and organized workspace for managing customer communications across various channels. This feature centralizes messages from sources such as email, chat, and social media into a single inbox, streamlining agent workflows. With Zendesk Inbox, support teams can efficiently prioritize and respond to customer inquiries, ensuring a timely resolution process. The platform includes collaboration tools, allowing team members to work together on resolving issues. Additionally, it offers automation features to help manage routine tasks and prioritize critical messages.
Help Center
Zendesk's Help Center product is designed to allow businesses to create self-service support resources. The Help Center allows organizations to build a centralized knowledge base, housing articles, FAQs, and guides to address common customer queries. The platform offers customization options, enabling businesses to tailor the look and feel of their support content to align with their brand. It offers intuitive navigation and search functionality that allows customers to easily find relevant information. Zendesk's Help Center also supports multimedia content, including images and videos, enriching the customer learning experience. Additionally, it provides analytics tools to track user engagement and measure the effectiveness of support content.
Zendesk has two tiers of service: the Basic offering and the Suite offering. With Basic you have access to Zendesk's ticketing system for managing customer service emails (and Twitter & Facebook social channels). With the Suite you have access to the email ticketing system in addition to chat, voice, and messaging. In the Suite plan, you also gain access to their Help Center product and AI functionality.
All plans are priced on a per seat (or agent) basis. Zendesk also offers discounts for signing yearly contracts instead of month to month contracts. All pricing shown below is based on monthly contracts.
There are three Basic plans. The Support Team plan includes the ticketing system and email, Twitter, and Facebook support channels. The Support Professional Plan adds CSAT (customer satisfaction surveys) and multi-language support. The Support Enterprise plan includes skills based routing, custom agent roles, and customized workspaces for your agents.
There are four plans in the Suite tier: Suite Team, Suite Growth, Suite Professional, and Suite Enterprise.
What exactly does Zendesk do?
Zendesk is primarily a customer support platform that helps companies manage customer support tickets and communication.
Who uses Zendesk?
Zendesk customers include Siemens, Lomi, ILIA, Rapha, Thursday Boots, and LUSH cosmetics.
What are the drawbacks to Zendesk?
While it is feature rich, it is less intuitive than our recommended tooland requires more development resources to set up and optimize. Users described Zendesk as a large enterprise tool with lots of tech debt and various functions kluged on.
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