Zendesk believes new design is way to lasting customer service peace

When they launched Zendesk in 2007, the company's three Danish founders -- Mikkel Svane, Alexander Aghassipour and Morten Primdahl -- knew the future of customer service was in the cloud.

Not only would a Web-based customer service and help desk application be cheaper and easier to implement than expensive, on-premise software from large vendors, they figured, but customers would also prefer a familiar browser interface, making the entire support "transaction" faster and more satisfying for everyone concerned.

The founders also saw how social media and smart devices were revolutionizing the way companies interacted with consumers, who increasingly wanted quick and personalized service through the communications mediums of their choice. Over time, Zendesk integrated Twitter and Facebook to its customer service platform (along with Salesforce) and created mobile apps for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry users.

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Since its launch five years ago, Zendesk has attracted more 20,000 enterprise customers supporting more than 100 million end users around the globe, the company said. Among its customers are daily-deals site Groupon, enterprise social player Yammer, 20th Century Fox and Vodaphone.

Zendesk, which relocated to San Francisco from Denmark in 2009 and now has more than 250 employees, last week announced it has secured $60 million in venture capital from several Silicon Valley heavyweights, including deal leader Redpoint Ventures.

The company also announced a completely redesigned customer service platform, featuring a single-page design interface offering multiple communications channels such as live chat, social media, online communities, email and phone support.

Zendesk proclaims its redesigned platform will set "a new standard in the consumerization of the enterprise."

We asked JD Peterson, Zendesk's vice president of marketing, why this is so.

"With the new Zendesk, a customer service agent can quickly and easily access a number of different pieces of information, such as the history of a customer's issue, the details of a customer's organization, whether they've experienced the same problem before, and if they've had any activity in the company's forums," he says. "This isn't unlike Facebook's Timeline design if you think about it."

And as with the influx of personal smart devices forcing a revolution in enterprise IT practices, the "socialization" of the help desk is entirely consumer-driven.

"The way consumers communicate with companies has significantly changed over the past few years," Peterson says. "Consumers expect their inquiries should and will happen in real-time. So we're taking our cues from many of the social channels that have certainly helped define the new wave of consumer communication."

From a customer service perspective, an agent using Zendesk can operate with multiple tabs open, enabling them to handle more than one help ticket at a time and reducing downtime and transition time.

Agents also can "flip back and forth between the a number of different pieces of information ... all of which can be updated while the inquiry is still active and appearing in the most current view," Peterson says.