The Zendesk Story

Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service platform that aims to improve communication between the company and its customers. More than 100,000 brands use Zendesk as their chosen CRM. Let’s take a look at the history of Zendesk and learn a little more about it.

All big things have small beginnings…

Zendesk was established in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007 by three friends: Morten Primdahl, Alexander Aghassipour, and Mikkel Svane. The authors began developing Zendesk’s software in Svane's loft. Initially, Zendesk was financed by the fellow benefactors with each working as consultants to support their families.

Zendesk SaaS was released in the Fall of 2007, and it had around 1,000 beta customers. Initially, interest in the product spread gradually through word-of-mouth spreading among other startups. Adoption sped up in 2008, because of widespread interest in solving client grievances via web-based media, and later Twitter began utilizing Zendesk.

Investors and venture capitalists were ready to finance Zendesk provided that the organization moved to the United States, where a large portion of their clients lived. Zendesk moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 2009 for around a half year prior to moving again to San Francisco, California.

The organization raised $500,000 in seed funding, which was trailed by a Series A financing round for an undisclosed amount and a Series B round for $6 million. Zendesk raised $19 million and $60 million in Series C and Series D respectively. This carried all-out investment totaled to about $86 million.

In 2014, Zendesk went public and was valued at $1.7 billion. The IPO raised $100 million. That very year, Zendesk declared its first acquisition, a live-chat organization called Zopim for $29.8 million. It obtained a French examination organization called BIME for $45 million. It likewise acquired Outbound.io, which created programming to oversee direct correspondences with clients via online media sites. Additionally, Zendesk procured Base, which created a sales automation software that rivaled salesforce.com, for $50 million.

What does Zendesk do?

Zendesk Support assembles every one of your connections with clients in a single spot, permitting you to have a smooth and useful work process. Your client will have a similar encounter regardless of the channel they use to reach you: email or social media like Facebook; or social messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Wechat, Twitter Direct, and so forth.

Zendesk also has a cloud-based bot that is intended to scale with the needs of a business or group. The product turns out best for all sorts of fair size organizations and large firms. A larger number of businesses have already implemented Zendesk Chat since it permits them to contact clients directly. It likewise gives the component that permits you to answer to visits online also disconnected through any program.

Some of Zendesk’s notable clients are Dropbox, Etsy, League of Legends, and Kickstart.

Zendesk today

By 2018, Zendesk had a yearly income of $500 million. In October 2019, Zendesk revealed that it was hacked in 2016, bringing about a possible breach of data about clients using Zendesk.

In May 2019, Zendesk procured Montreal-based Smooch, for an undisclosed sum. Smooch was a messaging service for live client support. In 2020, Zendesk announced more tools for customer support via web-based media. In October 2021, Zendesk reported that it was getting Momentive Global Inc., previously SurveyMonkey, for $4.13 billion.

What Zendesk users love about it

Zendesk has been praised for being a one-stop-shop for all things ticket management. No prior coding skill is needed to use or integrate Zendesk into your current process as their instructions are easy to follow. Macros, trigger automation, and customizability are some of the features which make Zendesk the choice of thousands of companies.

What do users have to complain about?

Though Zendesk has customer support, they’ve been known to be disappointing. Customers have been raising tickets for known bugs for months and are still struggling to resolve the issue. The software has also been known to lag under heavy load, but this might be an issue on the platform’s end. 

Zendesk’s pricing

1. Support Only: $19/agent/month for email and social media customer support, web and mobile apps, interaction history.
2. Suite Team: $49/agent/month for ticketing system, messaging across web, mobile and social platforms, help center, and automation.
3. Suite Growth: $79/agent/month for features of suite team, self-service customer portal, customizable ticket layout.
4. Suite Pro: $99/agent/month for features of suite growth, community forums, private conversation thread, sharable dashboard
5. Support Pro: $49/agent/month for features of suite team, multilingual content, CSAT surveys, dashboard, and reporting.
   

To wrap it up

While Zendesk has its bells and whistles, it has been criticized for being one of the most expensive CRM software out there. Zendesk has a 30 day trial period, so be sure to give it a test drive before you fully commit and find out if it fits the criteria your organization is looking for. If not, consider alternatives such as Helpjuice, HappyFox, Sharepoint, Groove, and LiveAgent.