Zendesk, the cloud-based customer service platform startup, has raised $60 million in new financing led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from Index Ventures, GGV Capital, Goldman Sachs, Silicon Valley Bank and prior backers, including Charles River Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners.
Along with the cash injection news, the company has also revealed a new interface which, according to Zendesk, shows off “the best of social media and consumer application single-page design, helps businesses interact with their customers in a familiar, conversational way, without sacrificing scalability or automation”.
Basically, the new version means that users can see communications channels like live chat, social media, email and online communities as well as phone support all in one place – one that is easy on the eye to boot.
The new Zendesk has been rebuilt from the ground up with added features and an application framework called Zendesk Apps. It is also the largest deploy to date on Ember, the JavaScript development framework for building web applications.
Zendesk Apps allows businesses to use third-party and internal systems together so that customer service can be viewed and organised alongside other company business and updates.
“We have been a leader in applying ideas born and nurtured in the consumer space to enterprise software,” said Adrian McDermott, Zendesk’s Senior Vice President of Engineering and Product. “Zendesk sees itself as a company that takes difficult business practices and makes them easy to understand and use within a beautiful product, enabling companies to give great customer service.”
Zendesk was founded in Denmark in 2007 before moving to the US and seeing rapid expansion. The company has more than 20,000 customers including Gilt Groupe, Box and Disney.
More recently the firm has returned to Europe with a recently opened office in London to support its more than 5,000 customers on the continent.
Last month the company released a mobile portal and was one of the companies to have a plugin added to the Hootsuite social App Directory.
Image Credit: Adria. Richards
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