Extending Zendesk’s Functionality

Zendesk is one of the top customer service tools on the market today and is renowned for its multi-channel support functionality, affordability and “beautifully simple” interface.

Over 450,000 companies use Zendesk as their support platform. These companies have support teams of all sizes, ranging from 2 to over 100 customer support agents and come from various industries including telecommunications, retail and healthcare.

The reason that Zendesk is used by organisations of such varying sizes and requirements, is that despite its simple interface, it is extremely customisable.

When first introducing Zendesk, we talk about how it integrates with the most commonly used support channels which include phone, email, chat and social media. However, one can go beyond this basic functionality and use the Zendesk API to create a support system which is tailored to meet individual business needs.

The Zendesk interface is actually built on the API itself, which makes it easy to create new support channels (such as contact form on your website) or to integrate the help desk with an internal system by pushing and extracting data between the two.

There are also a number of ready-made apps and integrations available on the Zendesk app store, including various CRM integrations (e.g. Microsoft Dynamics CRM), which extract additional customer data from the CRM system, and give agents the full picture to help them deal with a support ticket better.

If you require some sort of integration which is not available on the Zendesk app store, it is possible to create your own. Zendesk have recently launched a revamped Developer Portal which includes all the necessary documentation to get you started on creating any apps and integrations. The portal has a community feature for support as well as blog posts with new feature announcements, tutorials and tips.

The new version of the customer portal also includes a beta version of Zendesk’s new Android and iOS mobile SDKs, which now give companies the ability to integrate support into mobile applications. Customers can directly submit a ticket, read Help Centre articles, and reply to tickets without having to go through email. The SDKs even have a “Rate My App” feature to help improve app store ratings.

Here at iMovo we specialise in all things Zendesk, including customisation and training. If you are interested in learning more about how you can use Zendesk to improve your customer support, or extend your existing Zendesk account to improve functionality, feel free to get in touch with us.