What is Zendesk and what is its purpose?

If you’re not a complete novice in the help desk industry, you’ve probably already heard about Zendesk. However, managers who only think about Help centers for their businesses may ask, “What is Zendesk?”

It seems like Zendesk has been on the market since the time help desks were first invented. The other reason for its being such a huge figure is that it literally has a lot to offer. There are a bunch of various applications you can choose from.

So, it makes sense that people wonder what Zendesk is when there’s so much rush around it. Well, that’s precisely why we’re here – to answer the question: “What does Zendesk do?”

What is Zendesk?

What is Zendesk used for?

Zendesk is primarily used to serve, support, and engage customers. It helps companies manage all their customer interactions in one place for more efficient customer service. The software turns all customer inquiries into manageable tickets to ensure every issue is tracked and resolved promptly.

Omnichannel support, a self-service platform, integrated analytics capabilities, advanced AI, and much more—all of which form the well-known end-to-end customer service solution known as Zendesk.

About the company

Zendesk is a company that provides all kinds of software for customer support services. It was founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was first run in a small loft.

Now, it is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and it helps about 160,000 businesses connect to their customers on different platforms and provide better service and experience. Over 5,400 employees work for Zendesk in more than 160 countries.

Among Zendesk’s clients, you can recognize names such as Airbnb, Bolt, L’oreal, Squarespace, Fossil, and Vimeo. Yes, all these loyal Zendesk customers have already improved their customer service with its high-quality products.

However, as the company grew, it changed the logo to a much simpler one. The redesign has a lot to do with basic shapes; however, each of them represents a distinct “personality” of each Zendesk Product. This platform’s interface is intuitive, and its functionality suits any business request and style.

General information about Zendesk software

Let’s also take a look at some general information on some technical aspects of Zendesk:

What is Zendesk Top Feature?

Below are some top features that Zendesk offers for your business solutions:

Knowledge Base

Zendesk knowledge base helps share the support with the agents, customers, and the public. This is one of the numerous Zendesk features that allows you to create and organize your content to attract visitors. You can create FAQ sections or a bunch of different interlinked articles to guide your customers about the products and services you offer.

How will it help you boost customer service?

The key aspect is that the more your Knowledge Base is get updated, the more time agents get on comprehensive requests. Customers can search for the most common issue solutions in the Knowledge Base by themselves. On the other hand, agents speed up their work by using articles to answer questions.

An example of a Knowledge Base created with Zendesk

Ticketing System

Zendesk gathers all the customer queries and shows them on one screen in one place. You can manage and respond to customer questions easily and quickly. When all the queries from chat, email, and social media are heading to you in a single location, it will help you manage and solve problems straightforwardly.

In Zendesk Support, all the tickets (requests) are located and ordered on one page called Views. There are a lot of customizable filters you can use to find necessary requests and sort out them by channel (email, What’s App, message, chat, etc.), ticket status (new, opened, pending, solved, closed, etc.), and other elements.

Convenient, right?

Ticketing system

Automation

You can automate mundane tasks to avoid human errors and increase process speed. It helps you manage your workflow and improves customer satisfaction and performance. For example, it is possible to set up notifications for agents to inform them when the ticket is unresolved and the ticket requester (simply, your customer) is waiting for a response.

Moreover, you can use automation to send automatic messages after the ticket gets closed to find out the quality of customer support work and ask for feedback. So, this option allows for setting up the time when the message will be sent and what information it will contain. This Zendesk feature can become a good supplement for companies that implement customer service automation operations.

Automations page

Zendesk AI

Artificial intelligence and chatbots have transformed customer support over the years, so Zendesk has stepped up with its innovative AI tools.

Zendesk AI suite goes beyond simple automation, utilizing machine learning to prioritize tickets and provide intelligent recommendations while powering advanced solutions like the Zendesk chatbot. With real-time sentiment analysis and seamless integration across the entire ecosystem, Zendesk artificial intelligence enables faster issue resolution and delivers instant, accurate responses to customer inquiries.

Zendesk AI copilot

Multi-Brand

It supports 300 brands, service tiers, products, or regions, helping you easily manage your work by centralizing data and activity into a single account. For example, you can create different brands in one Zendesk Support account and send messages from each of them. If you use email to respond to your customer, they will see the name and email address of the brand you selected inside the ticket area.

Brands Page

Guided Mode

Help agents in focusing and increasing the response time by automatically queuing tickets for them.

Zendesk Guided Mode

Pre-defining Ticket Actions

You can pre-define the responses to standard questions. For this, Zendesk has the Macros option. Agents use it to create responses in advance that can include not only the main text on the email/message but also the subject, brand, default/custom fields, and ticket status.

Default (Standard) Fields contain general ticket information, like the responsible agent, ticket requester, priority, tags, etc.

Custom fields in Zendesk allow you to set up additional ticket details. For example, they could be some notes, customer status, tracking number, product details, and so on.

Ticket Actions

Zendesk Products

Zendesk software offers a variety of products, all targeted at helping businesses improve their overall customer experience.

Support

Helps to organize incoming customer requests from multiple channels in one place. This way, customer support representatives feel more confident in their work as they do not need to monitor the company’s communication channels to help customers.

Zendesk Support has an advanced ticketing system developed to manage all the requests. It provides a bunch of customization options for agents to make the interaction with the platform smooth and convenient.

Support’s home page

Integrations for Zendesk Support

The most appealing of this platform is that a lot of companies all around the world develop integrations exactly for Zendesk Support. We are also not an exception! With Proactive Campaigns, Email Tracking, and GDPR Compliance for Zendesk Support, you can send mass email campaigns, track if customers read your emails, and delete or anonymize users’ data and tickets to comply with GDPR.

Guide

This part of the software “guides” businesses in the right direction through a knowledge base of all customer complaints, frequently asked questions, their resolutions, and more in one place. Businesses can create better-targeted marketing campaigns by obtaining data from their knowledge base.

Zendesk Guide

If you have already been using Zendesk Guide, we would like to offer you a substantial update on the Help Center you have. Zendesk provides only one theme for Guide that is not actually can fit all businesses, especially if you want to outstand and take care of the brand perception.

The GrowthDot team developed awesome Zendesk Themes that have different sets of functions, and all of them are fully customizable. Plus, we offer free installation, so check it out!

Chat

This service is as simple as it sounds. Zendesk Chat provides live chat support to customers who visit your website and need help. So, greet your customers as soon as they land on your website and assist them with their queries in real-time communication.

Zendesk Chat

Talk

Sometimes, messaging and emailing are insufficient to understand the customer’s request. Therefore, Zendesk Talk is specifically for this case. It works best for call centers as customer support can view customer interactions from all the channels and converse with customers relying on that information.

Zendesk Talk

Sell

Zendesk Sell is the CRM side of the software that gives sales teams a deeper insight into the sales pipeline to improve the overall workflow, close deals, and boost productivity. This software has a lot of functions to manage sales; however, it is more considered a separate platform.

Zendesk Sell

If you are looking for a similar tool for a lower price, try the CRM and Deals app for Zendesk Support. This application assists agents in managing sales pipelines and deals. Besides, you can message customers right from the application and make necessary notes or set up reminders.

There are a lot of customization features that help you convert leads and prospects into active customers on a lifetime basis. If you have any doubts, just install a 7-day free trial and test it to the max.

One more benefit for you. The application, as well as our other apps, are free to use on Zendesk Sandbox accounts.

Explore

Data is the new fuel, and Explore is there to allow businesses to power their engines with it. Moreover, businesses can better serve their customers with detailed, actionable, and visual reports.

Zendesk Explore

Gather

Gather is a forum for businesses where they can let customers interact and provide feedback about company products and services. It is a great way to engage with customers and give them a way to say their minds about your business.

Zendesk Gather

Other customer service software

Do you remember the Zendesk Connect platform, which helped businesses design their outbound marketing campaigns? Unfortunately, it was closed in 2021. But we have an even better alternative for you: Proactive Campaigns for Zendesk.

The app helps you design, analyze, test, execute, and measure the performance of your marketing campaigns. It ensures precise outreach by allowing you to segment your audience into lists or upload a CSV file with necessary contacts.

The range of features is extensive, including SMS campaigns, bulk ticket updates, integrated surveys, and more. With this tool, you can maximize your email marketing results without much effort. Enjoy the benefits of drip campaigns to automate your email sequences and engage with your audience at the right time.

Try it for free with a 7-day trial to experience the real impact of Proactive Campaigns on your marketing effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and conversion rates.

Want to extend your Zendesk’s capabilities even more? Zendesk offers applications for both its own and its partners, so you can choose and install the most appropriate for you. Go to the Zendesk marketplace, read the client’s reviews, and find the best one.

What is Zendesk Pricing?

Zendesk can help your business improve with the effective tools that it offers. As there are various tools, it comes in different Zendesk pricing plans depending on the functions that your business may require. You should choose which plan suits your business better depending on your budget and your needed features. Here are the plans that Zendesk offers, including features and pricing, so that you can make your decision easier.

Migrate to Zendesk

If you decide to migrate from any other help desk platform to Zendesk, we want to help make this process for you as easy as possible. Manual data migration is a time and effort-consuming process that requires, in most cases, coding skills. Help Desk Migration is a product that minimizes the risks of missing the imported data, do the migration quickly, and you are free from coding!

The Help Desk Migration can move not only tickets, customer information, and organizations (companies/groups) but also default and custom fields and Knowledge Base materials. Contact the HDM team for more information and try the demo migration for free.

Conclusion

Zendesk is the best tool for customer support. It helps you in connecting with your customers through one centralized platform and assists them with their needs. The helpdesk helps your customer support team in:

• Creating support tutorials and materials
• Tracking document problems and bugs
• Responding to customers with detailed answers
• Closing tickets faster

So, whether you are an established enterprise or a growing startup, you can rely on this complete suite of software to offer top-level customer support and beat your competitors.

FAQs

Is Zendesk a CRM system?

While Zendesk offers functionalities that overlap with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, it primarily focuses on customer support rather than managing the entire customer lifecycle. Zendesk focuses on ticketing, helpdesk management, and customer service automation.

What are the main Zendesk features?

Zendesk’s main features include a ticketing system, knowledge base, live chat, call center software, analytics and reporting, AI chatbot, integrations with other tools, and more.

Is Zendesk free to use?

The company offers a trial period for new users to explore its features and functionality. However, beyond the trial period, Zendesk operates on a subscription-based model where users pay for access to its platform and services based on their specific needs and usage requirements.

What types of businesses can benefit from using Zendesk?

Zendesk caters to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises, in e-commerce, technology, healthcare, finance, education, etc. Any company that values customer service excellence and seeks to streamline support processes can benefit from using Zendesk.