World’s Most Popular Customer Service Software Now Available Free of Charge

January 30, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO–, CA – January 30, 2012 –- Zendesk, the proven cloud-based help desk software provider, today announced that it is offering its Zendesk Starter Plan free of charge to anyone who donates $20 to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. Annual Starter subscriptions will renew with annual $20 donations. Previously a Zendesk Starter subscription would have cost up to $324 per year. This announcement was made in conjunction with the availability of Zendesk on the Google Chrome Web Store.

“Our goal is to make great customer service software available to everyone,” said Mikkel Svane, Zendesk’s CEO. “Of course, we could do that by making it free, but we asked ourselves, ‘What would be better than free?’ And the answer was by helping others. We know that Zendesk’s availability on the Google Chrome Web Store would bring us many new customers regardless of price, but we wanted to pay it forward by having people donate to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital to receive their free Zendesk.”

To donate and get a free copy of Zendesk Starter Plan, go to www.zendesk.com/donate.

Zendesk and the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital

Last year Zendesk pledged $1 million to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. “Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff has been an inspiration to us on how to integrate philanthropy into a company’s culture,” Svane said. “In addition to our other fund-raising activities for the hospital, we decided that this “Better than Free” model would accelerate reaching our $1 million goal to help support the hospital’s amazing research that benefits children all around the world.”

Zendesk on the Google Chrome Web Store

Zendesk now has two offerings on the Google Chrome Web Store. The first is the Zendesk Activity Stream that displays recent customer service activity on the computer desktop when new inquiries come in. This means that agents never have to miss customer service requests even if they are not working in their browser. This new capability is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The second is the Zendesk Launch Pad that allows customer service agents to launch into specific areas of Zendesk directly from the Chrome Apps page in their browser.

About Zendesk

Zendesk is the leading provider of proven, cloud-based help desk software. For growing organizations, Zendesk is the fastest way to enable great customer service. More than 15,000 Zendesk customers, including Adobe, Sony, OpenTable and Groupon, trust Zendesk with their most valuable assets: their customers, partners, and employees. Founded in 2007, Zendesk is funded by Charles River Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.

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