Zendesk Builds Dedicated Customer Engagement Application for Facebook Messenger

April 12, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–April 12, 2016– Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE: ZEN) today announced Zendesk Message, a dedicated application built for businesses to address the unique characteristics of messaging and the growing demand for customer interactions within this channel. Integrated with the Messenger Platform — announced at Facebook’s F8 conference — Zendesk Message combines the power of automated interactions with live support conversations in Messenger to quickly and efficiently assist customers.

Spring, a digital shopping platform available on mobile and web, is using Zendesk to integrate human chat into a Messenger bot experience that allows users to shop, discover or browse Spring’s assortment in a natural, conversational way. Bots on Messenger will amplify Spring’s seamless shopping platform with the ability to deliver a best-in-class conversational commerce experience to customers. Conversations can lead customers to purchase the items directly on Spring, ask more questions, or connect with a human at Spring’s concierge.

“Messenger is more than just another support channel — it’s becoming the destination where customers can browse, buy and receive important information,” said Royston Tay, general manager of messaging at Zendesk. “Today’s businesses must meet customers wherever they are and combine the personal touch of human interactions with the convenience of automated activities through bots.”

“Spring is excited to partner with Zendesk to incorporate human messaging as part of Spring’s Personal Shopping bot on Messenger,” said Alan Tisch, co-founder and CEO of Spring. “Bots on Messenger are a prime example of how conversational commerce is developing, and Spring is thrilled to work with Zendesk to deliver users a shopping experience that seamlessly integrates automated personal shopping with best-in-class concierge customer support.”

BarkBox, a subscription service for dog owners, also has begun using Zendesk’s integration with the Messenger Platform. As a result, BarkBox’s average response times to its customers in Messenger has decreased dramatically, from 60 minutes to 4 minutes.

“Bark & Co. is obsessed with offering our pup parents and their dogs an amazing customer experience,” said Hernan Giraldo, head of customer experience operations at Bark & Co. “Through Zendesk, we saw our average response times on Messenger decrease dramatically, even as the number of meaningful conversations on the channel doubled.”

Zendesk Message addresses the unique characteristics of messaging, which is more persistent and contextual in nature. Similar to consumer messaging platforms, Zendesk Message introduces a timeline view of customer conversations so support agents can easily reference important events within a long thread and see the context of past agent responses and automated messages. Agents can move quickly from one conversation to the next, and easily assign and manage conversations.

Gartner named customer service for Facebook as one of the major customer engagement projects for enterprises in 2016. Additionally, a recent report from AppAnnie revealed those aged 13 to 24 now spend more than 3.5 times overall usage time in messaging apps. As these youth become adults, the importance of messaging apps will only increase.

Availability

Zendesk Message is currently available in an early access program for select customers and partners, with plans for a general release later this year. For more information and to request early access, visit www.zendesk.com/message

About Zendesk

Zendesk provides a customer service platform designed to bring organizations and their customers closer together. With more than 69,000 paid customer accounts, Zendesk’s products are used by organizations in 150 countries and territories to provide support in more than 40 languages. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, Zendesk has operations in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.