I have a new twitter follower @justinflitter. As with most people who sign up to follow me on Twitter I thank them and then have a look at their website link. Justins links took me to his blog which I started to read. He has a really interesting blog entry about how he managed to find his current employer, zendesk. It involved a fair bit of tweeting (of the twitter find) and skyping but he got there in the end – congratulations! Read his blog for the full story.
Justin now works for zenddesk. Zendesk’s proposition looks very interesting indeed.
In a previous life I was a Service Delivery Manager for some of IBM’s call centre infrastructure and I was pleased to see the use of ITIL. ITIL is almost a religion in the Service Delivery world.
I ended up as a Service Delivery Manager having risen through the ranks starting as a Helpdesk operative, and then IT Service Analyst across multiple Service Management disciplinesuch as Problem, Change, Configuration, Availability, Performance Management etc.
One of the hardest things I found was getting the customers problem into the helpdesk system accurately – I would expect zenddesk to have the same sort of problems. The other common issue was getting the helpdesk best resource addressing the customers problem in a timely fashion. Zenddesk have a pool of operatives around the globe that can be called upon to help any customers problem.
I think this is a brilliant idea for a solution for Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) although the challenge would be the number of operatives within the New Zealand timezone. Assuming that was covered, at a cost of US$19 per agent per month the price looks pretty good. zenddesk provides communities, forums, tags and blogs to help customers interact with the helpdesk / incident management team – good stuff.
One quick comment on the web site…on the faq page http://www.zendesk.com/faq it should say
“How safe is my data?”
rather than
“How safe are my data?”
Small details….
I have included the zenddesk promotional video – thumbs up for the idea and solution from me!
December 16th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I’d say that they are both correct or at least acceptable. ‘Data’ is the plural of ‘datum’, but ‘data’ is now also being used (one could argue more commonly used) in the same sense as “information” which is uncountable. Who ever heard of informations?Now if it was daughters!
How safe is my daughter? How safe are my daughters?
December 16th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I hear you but it just sounds wrong to me!! If you say it aloud its a bit weird. and don’t worry I am sure your daughters are safe!
)
December 26th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Zendesk has one d. MIght want to fix the link
“zenddesk provides communities, forums,..”
December 26th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
You might want to check out HelpSpot if you haven’t already. You can run it on your own server so it’s more affordable for larger operations. http://www.userscape.com/products/helpspot/
January 12th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
@Jason Kemp Thanks!
January 12th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
@Jones I hadn’t seen that so appreciate you adding the link