Category: Zendesk
Do you have a website where you’d like to easily manage incoming questions from visitors right within WordPress?
Maybe you’re a website development company who specializes in WordPress websites for your clients and it sure would be nice if they could ask you questions without having to leave the WordPress dashboard.
Well starting Monday, Zendesk will offer access to a new plugin they’re working on that will do just that!
Thursday 1/27/2011 is my last day working for Zendesk in San Francisco and I give you a tour of the offices and did a video this morning as well wrapping up my time at Zendesk. I did a full writeup on why I’m leaving last week so be sure to check that out if you haven’t.
I did webinars, video screencasts, demos, business development and training at Zendesk. I leave on a good note having helped to raise awareness of the brand and help customers have that “Ah-ha!” moment on how using a helpdesk to centralize their communication with customers can be a good thing!
Today I announce my upcoming departure from Zendesk at the end of January.
For the last year, I’ve been working as a consultant with Zendesk. I’ve enjoyed my time helping to build the Zendesk brand and am thankful for the amazing opportunity to work with a fast growing startup whose main focus is to make customers and support people happy.
There are a number of things that led me to this decision which you’ll read about below.
Photo credit: gin soakIf you don’t know what Zendesk is, it’s a helpdesk solution which allows you to centralize your conversations with customers so you can keep track of what needs to get done. It can be used for internal support of staff or be outward facing for direct support to the people who keep your company successful: your customers.
From October 2009 until January 2011, I’ve had six jobs at Zendesk:
1. Webinars - I created and delivered live, interactive events online to educate new and prospective customers about the benefits of Zendesk. I was particularly passionate about the ones that highlighted how to configure and use the numerous integrations into other cloud apps and services (over 60 integrations now).
2. Training – Identifying content, structuring it and delivering information about using Zendesk in a format that was straightforward and clear for adult learners. I followed the VARK learning model, considering the various learning styles –
Visual
Auditory
Reading
Kinesthetic
and planned outlines to keep attendees engaged and participating in the webinars.
3. Conferences – Socializing at events to spread the word of Zendesk, demo’ing how Zendesk works like I did at Dreamforce, listening to customers joys, collecting their questions and learning how to better reach people in productivity pain because they’re not using Zendesk.
4. Business development – Identifying vertical markets and specific companies that would benefit from Zendesk and reaching out, thinking of new ways to promote Zendesk, building relationships with companies that complimented Zendesk, helping developers create awesome integrations, keeping an ear open on social networks for chatter about Zendesk or helpdesks and helping to seed and nurture the passion I felt for Zendesk in others so the could retell the story.
5. Application development - After thinking about vertical markets that could benefit from using Zendesk in their business workflow, defining a solution that would raise visibility and encourage adoption of Zendesk in that market. From there, defining the functionality of the integration so that the potential customers would see the overwhelming value of adding Zendesk.
6. Evangelist – Although not an official brand ambassador for Zendesk, my contagious enthusiasm for technology solutions was clearly evident. I just couldn’t contain my excitement about how powerful and effective Zendesk could be to companies of all sizes. I always made sure to spend time listening more than I spoke so I could take in the problem Zendesk needed to solve. You can talk about cool, geeky features all day but your customers need to get why they need your product, in their own words. I wrote something up about what evangelism means to me which I’ll post to the blog but basically helping people have that “Ah-ha!” moment always makes my day.
In the webinars I held, I would create storylines around all sorts of companies; everything from hotels offering conference space to wine vinyards needing to manage inquires about wine tours to cookie companies shipping out frozen dough. Zendesk is a solution that works for more than just technology support needs. It’s a way to stay on top of requests and do so transparently, efficiently and in a way that takes advantage of automation so you’re not babysitting every single customer question.
Some of these roles were a new to me but I quickly realized I’d been doing these same things in one capacity or another with my own technology clients; researching, evaluating, testing, recommending, planning and deploying technology solutions.
At times, working at Zendesk reminded me of the Hedleys from In Living Color:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv_z2yGImJw
I was a customer of Zendesk first. In September of 2008, I made the switch from Cerberus to Zendesk to support my technology clients. The transition went very well and I grew to be a big fan sending in product suggestions, recommending it and did a video review. Good times. Good times.
I’m leaving because I don’t want to commit to a full time position at Zendesk.
Working full time for Zendesk would have meant leaving behind my dream of helping people through technology training and empowerment. It would have meant doing the same sort of things day in and day out. I fear that I could lose my passion for helping others with that sort of monotony.
Zendesk is no longer a small company. As many of you consultants and freelancers know, there’s a big difference between working from home, going into an office with a small group, a large group and a corporation. With Bluey’s recent illness of heart problems, it has become difficult taking care of her needs and commuting to the Zendesk office in SOMA. Working in an office day in and day out isn’t for me. Working remotely, video Skyping with clients and a quieter work day fit me better. For me, the pros don’t outweigh the cons. I prefer tackling new ideas and being able to take action on something sooner than later. Working with small business clients or people within a specific department suits my workstyle much better.
Zendesk is having a going away party for me next week and I’m looking forward to that. I will continue to promote Zendesk and explain how it works. The cloud app has made huge strides in terms of extending into other forms of communication like Twitter in social media and live chat for real-time support. One of the most exciting developments for me was the integration with LogMeIn since I’ve been a customer of theirs since 2006.
Yes. This means that I will be available for consulting, training and speaking both locally in San Francisco and willing to travel so feel free to contact me.
Last week I was at the Moscone center in San Francisco for Dreamforce.
I wasn’t going as an attendee but to “wo”man the expo booth for Zendesk and demo their new integration with Salesforce. This was my first time working a show but felt confident things would go well!
I’ve arrived at my one year anniversary consulting with Zendesk and have been offered a full time position at Zendesk in Business Development!
In this new role, I will work to bring on new companies to Zendesk and expand our integrations + partnerships. So basically it’s geeky stuff plus relationship building. Right up my alley! I’m both excited and squeamish about the opportunity as it means learning new things and creating measurable success for Zendesk yet I will have to put my personal brand on hold. I start full time January 2010.
Want to come and work with me? Check out Zendesk Jobs including:
A year ago, I agreed to undertake creating the Zendesk webinars. At that time, Zendesk was receiving several requests a week for demos. This was not efficient. Since I’d been a long time customer of Zendesk, having left Cerberus in favor of a cloud based helpdesk solution, and a vocal customer, they asked if I would be interested in creating a webinar series for them. Uhm, think about it….heck yes! And so began the journey of chubby buddah, Adria and San Francisco. The Sunday after Blogworld ended and I’d delivered my 500 hugs for John Chow, I flew to San Francisco for the very first time…
The goal was to reduce demo requests and increase conversions of trial customers to paying customers. Also, if the webinars could answer common questions customers had, there would be less support tickets in the queue. I set the work learning what the customers wanted to know. I interviewed Zendesk staff (much smaller group a year ago), looked at tickets and talked with customer support advocates. I drafted an outline for the very first webinar, Zendesk 101 and out it went through the Zendesk email system for feedback. After a few tweaks, a brief set of slides and a lot of practice, I was ready to hold the first webinar!
Initially we had technical problems with the internet and audio quality. Webex was the first company we went with to deliver the webinars and thankfully now we’ve switched to Citrix’s GoToMeeting / GoToWebinar / GoToTraining packages. I made sure from the first day surveys were sent out to collect feedback. Being a consultant, it’s very important to collect feedback early on and then keep it coming in. Not only for quality validation but to improve the delivery of your services. I used Google Docs spreadsheets for the form to collect the survey responses. We’ve now switched to SurveyGizmo which has advanced reporting and survey logic.
I’m no longer doing the Zendesk webinars. Amy has come on to run them.
Since I have a technical background and and enjoy training, the webinars were focused on showing attendees how to accomplish things within the Zendesk backend like creating tickets, managing queues and activating widgets. I spent time doing QnA, taking people through specific questions they had about workflow. Eventually we started doing special webinars that dove deeper into a specific aspect of Zendesk like customizing the CSS or setting up email routing. Webinars featuring partner integrations came on soon as well. Of course, I picked Harvest as the first integration to do a webinar with because…well, they rock! They were also how I found out about Zendesk. I was using Harvest for my time tracking and invoicing and they mentioned on their blog about their integration to Zendesk and probably in a newsletter.
Then with the creation of the marketing team at Zendesk, webinars focused on product launches and lead generation came about.
The goal of the webinars was to help prospective customers decide and guide existing customers embrace Zendesk more. I enjoyed developing the content, talking with integration partners and reading the awesome feedback attendees left! I’ve seen many of them at conferences like DrupalCon and Blogworld so it’s a nice way to circle back.
Things were going well and I was liking this webinar thing for Zendesk! I came to find out I also liked San Francisco. I was highly focused on my first visit to San Francisco last October. I didn’t go out much and left exploring the city up to the real tourists. Several things about San Francisco gave me pause: the weather, the racial diversity of the people, the architecture, the food and the saturation of people working in technology. Zendesk wasn’t half bad themselves! They invited me to return in December for the holiday party and that’s when it truly hit me; I could move to San Francisco and work for Zendesk!
Upon their invite, I contacted several people living in San Francisco, asking if they would meet with me to give me their opinion of the city. Cheryl Contee (@ch3ryl), C.J. Hayden (@cjhayden) and Mike all happily agreed. Wow, did it make a difference to hear their own personal stories! Just six months before at Blogging While Brown, my table had decided I should move to San Francisco vs buying a condo in Minneapolis and I had happily added it to my list of goals but had no idea how it would manifest.
The Zendesk holiday party certainly cinched it for me. I had an excellent time, the Danish food was great and the mood was festive. We had the first company meeting and I was awed by the CEO’s vision for Zendesk. I wanted to be a part of their success!
Traveling has always been a hard thing for me to do. I hate getting lost. I would print out my Google directions and hop into the car to see a client. God forbid, I had to make a change in my route because I would have to print out more directions! This all changed when I started using GPS and the TomTom software. This improved even more once I got my 3GS iPhone. Due to the number of conferences I was speaking out, I eventually overcame this dislike of travel in 2009 so then the thought of making that “Move To San Francisco” goal became a bit more realistic.
I began researching places to live and stories of moving to San Francisco. I talked with the kindly folks mentioned above. I told Zendesk my intentions, announced it on my blog and asked Twitter for help. I made the move to San Francisco in 4 months time (January to April) and it was the right choice. I spent a lot of time talking about the move and made quite a few videos. I have a lot of videos that haven’t been published yet. Thinking of how to
[VIDEO] Moving To The Mission District In San Francisco
[VIDEO] 5 Weeks After The Move To San Francisco
First Video on San Francisco Move
[VIDEO] Day 5 San Francisco Move Countdown: Packing, Pets, Party, Puters
Farewell Moving Party This Friday
Day 7 Countdown To San Francisco [VIDEO]
[VIDEO] Adria’s Countdown to San Francisco Move – Day 11 #AdriamoveSF
[VIDEO] How To Get Your San Francisco Dream Apartment On Craigslist With PadMapper
Day 13 Countdown #AdriamoveSF [VIDEO]
Day 14 Countdown To San Francisco [VIDEO]
San Francisco Apartment Research And Twitter Lurking
One of the things that’s been a challenge is settling into working in an office. I’ve been working remotely for four years so coming into an office with people everywhere has taken a while for me to adjust to. Being an introvert, I prefer to spend time alone and quietly. That’s when I do my best work. The office has people, stuff and everyones talking to each other. Oh well. Adjust I will.
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, I got my iPhone 3GS etched with the Star Trek United Federations badge. It came out in a nicely detailed, gold engraving and looks great!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRujjEW62sgv
PopChips, a maker of delicious snack chips with an interesting texture similar to rice crispies, will engrave any smartphone at the conference so get your etch on!
Check out their Facebook photo gallery of other people who got etching done.
It’s been hard to justify to my technology geek friends why they should sign up for Twitter. Some have ventured onto Facebook but Twitter seems to create “stage fright” where one is expected to perform (tweet). Now that Zendesk can pull in tweets, I’m going to push them all try try both!
Let’s take a look at the brief list I put together on ways you can use Twitter for your business. This is a similar list I go over with my clients to help them think big when we brainstorm.
Taking it from from the aspect of someone working in technology, development, mobile apps to really, any sort of company that provides a product, you can see Twitter is flexible and full of valuable information. Read More…
As we round the corner into summer, kids are getting out of school, young adults are graduating and parents are scrambling to keep the family entertained while they hold down full time jobs. Well, if you’re one of those parents and you work on keeping customers happy, you’ll want to check out this month’s webinars at Zendesk!
Read More…
It’s that time again to list the webinars at Zendesk for the month of June.
photo credit: adria.richards
This month special Zendesk webinar topic is: “Remote Authentication to Zendesk with Active Directory“. I’ll cover the remote authentication Single Sign On (SSO) feature which allows you to pass on existing credentials to Zendesk so people don’t have to sign in with yet another password.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT Register Read More…
Ever get sick and tired of repeating yourself on the phone when you’re trying to get something fixed at your job?
Customers all over the world struggle with getting their point across. Surprise them by knowing about all their communication with your organization next time they call!
Join us on Thursday’s Zendesk webinar where we will demo the new Salesforce integration! Close the loop between sales, support and service in your organization.
Zendesk has developed an entirely new integration for Salesforce, the wildly popular CRM soution, which allows you to view your tickets right within the account and contact views!
Zendesk and Salesforce: Closing the Customer Loop from Sales to Support
When: Thursday 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern)
Duration: 1 hour
Cost: Free
Register Read More…
So, you may know the story of the shirt but if you don’t here it is!
(3rd person of course because that’s always fun for storytelling)
Zendesk is a cloud company focused on helping you deliver amazing customer service through better communication. Their tool helps companies make happy customers.
Adria was a customer for 2 years. She did a video on how their software helped her be a better technology consultant. They sent her a shirt. It was too big. Adria spoke up. Zendesk made new shirts that fit women geeks.
Here, Adria shows her joy for the new shirt!
Adria now does weekly webinars for Zendesk and loves sharing how to increase office productivity! Read More…
With a slight interruption in the webinar schedule due to SXSW (Did you make it to the Small Business Web cloud party?), there are just four more webinars I’m doing in the month of March. After this, I’ll be relocating to San Francisco so get in your live webinar time now! There will be a short webinar break as I settle into my new digs in SF.
I’ll also be doing a guest webinar with Groundwork. They provide network monitoring tools (think Nagios) and you can escalate issues right into Zendesk. That’s on Thursday and I’ll be blogging about it tomorrow so I guess that makes FIVE webinars!
photo credit: Laughing Squid Read More…
Join me for another great set of Zendesk webinars this month!
We’ll explore how you can:
You can also attend the weekly Zendesk 101 and Welcome to Zendesk webinars!
Zendesk is an easy to use, flexible, cloud app that helps increase customer satisfaction. It helps you keep a pulse on the needs of your customers and interfaces with a ton (and I do mean a TON) of other popular apps like Salesforce, Basecamp, Mailchimp, Harvest, Get Satisfaction and more!
With an elegant, simple interface, helping your customers is straightforward and dare I say, “enjoyable”?! That’s why I got hooked on Zendesk in 2008 and can’t stop talking about them! That would also be why I’m doing the webinars *smile*
As you may have noticed, I’m running the lively and upbeat webinars at Zendesk!
Once a customer and now an evangelist / trainer, I show people how to get started using Zendesk in their support workflow process. The webinars are not “one way” discussions like many of us have experienced with online webinars. You, the customer, are part of the action! We discuss how companies, large and small are using Zendesk to deliver outstanding customer service by centralizing requests in one spot.
Zendesk is very easy to pick up. If you’ve been providing support to your customers via email, don’t worry! You still can do this but now have the added features of being able to search, assign and run reports against all those emails because they’re captured in Zendesk too! I enjoy the “ah ha” moments people have when they see how well Zendesk will fit into their business workflow!
In addition to the 101 webinars, I’ve been doing more in-depth sessions to include CSS design of your Zendesk account and Email & DNS redirection.
For upcoming webinars, we’ll showcase SSO (Single Sign-On) for Microsoft Active Directory and Drupal. You can read about the API options to interact with Zendesk including REST, remote authentication, widgets, targets and the ability to set properties via email.
Sign up for the Zendesk newsletter to get announcement for upcoming webinars!
Photo credit: LaughingSquid
You’ve been hearing me talk about Zendesk. Now I’m going to share with you what I’ve been working on!
I’m happy to announce the webinars are now public and you can check out the list of Zendesk webinars for January on the blog.
Everyone pretty much has touched a computer sometime in their lives. When things go wrong, you may click a few buttons, try to “Google” the problem or call for help. The jokes on bad technical support are endless.
I will be giving away 1 YEAR Zendesk Plus subscription for 3 users!
Updated: Contest extended until 1/25/2009 because I’ve been running around the country to all these conferences and I know you all have stories to share!
This includes 24×5 phone and email support
Rules:
Now remember, Zendesk has plans starting at just $9 a month for a single user subscription. No worries on installing software or configuring your email MX records. Sign up and be enlightened.
Ready? Go! Tell me your story and win!
