They Tweeted, Met and Gave

Two weeks ago Tweeters from 202 cities all over the world got together for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.

So far more than $250,000 have been collected for the cause, and the organizers are still counting. Get the latest update on the Twestival site.

Zendesk was a happy drinks sponsor for the Twestivals in Auckland, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Copenhagen and Boston. The twestivals in Copenhagen and Boston collected $2,600 and $4,000 respectively.

Our friends in Melbourne have suggested donating proceeds from the Melbourne leg of the Twestival to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal, following the devastating bushfires that have swiped the region recently.

Pictures from Copenhagen and Boston Twestivals. Photos by Niklas Stephenson and Ava Photography respectively.

Good Help Desk Karma from StickyStreet

Earlier today we received this in our inbox:

Hey Zendesk guys!

I just wanted to let you know how much we love your service!

Because of Zendesk, StickyStreet has been able to provide excellent, timely, and organized customer support, which in turn has given us the ability to grow into a service with a global reach. The killer app for us has been the ability to turn any customer support request or email into a knowledge base article! The seamless process is awesome, and the new ability to have customers send a support request straight from our site (with a really cool-looking form) is making a great process even more seamless.

And oh yeah: the Buddha Machine? Oddly satisfying, and especially calming when trying to answer those support requests that break the rule of "There's no such thing as a stupid question."

Cheers!

Tiago Soromenho
Founder & CTO
StickyStreet, LLC

Thanks Tiago, we love you too. Great that you wanted to share this with us.

Yammer Integration Ready

Yammer provides micro blogging for internal use in companies and organizations. Micro blogging is great for informally posting ideas, sharing information and asking questions.

And now your support team can also post ticket updates and solutions directly to your Yammer account. Identical to the previously announced Twitter target, Zendesk now has a Yammer target that you can fire off with all ticket updates.

We've already started using this ourselves and are looking forward to feedback and ideas from our customers.

Friends and Fools in San Francisco

If you're in San Francisco tomorrow, Zendesk friends and fools will meet at Medjool from 6-8pm. And you're welcome too. See you then.

Speak Your Customers' Language

As announced last week, Zendesk now supports multiple languages for the customer-facing front-end. As an account admin simply select "Personalize your Zendesk" from the Account tab and select the language you want.

Currently Zendesk offers support for English, Danish, Spanish and Chinese with Portuguese and German coming very soon.

The translations are a crowdsourced effort, so if you want to implement a translation to e.g. French, Australian English or Japanese, simply email support@zendesk.com stating your account name and language.

The translation interface is available directly from your help desk and a full translation can be completed in approx two hours.

Thank You, Kiwis

The Zendesk Meet-up in Auckland was a big success and we want to thank everybody for making it such a nice event. Especially our friends from the Auckland Tweet-up who joined us this evening.

Next chance to meet Zendesk near you is on Thursday at the Twestivals in Auckland, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Copenhagen and Boston, where Zendesk is a happy drinks sponsor. Hope to see you then!

Two-way Salesforce.com Integration

Last year we launched an integration to Salesforce.com, and last month the Zendesk Ticket View 1.3.5 application officially arrived to the Force.com AppExchange as an AppExchange Certified Application.

The Zendesk Ticket View application provides an easy view of current Zendesk tickets for your Salesforce.com accounts and contacts.

This weekend's update to Zendesk brings additional Salesforce.com integration to Zendesk. A new Salesforce widget can be inserted on all ticket pages, and allows you to look up ticket requester directly in your Salesforce.com account.

Say you receive a support request from an Ashley James, the widget is populated with the email address of Ashley and can instantly look up any details you have on Ashley in your Salesforce system and display it directly in the widget.

As always we welcome your feedback.

Due to Salesforce.com API regulations, the widget will only work with Enterprise and Unlimited Salesforce accounts.

Go(o)d Help Desk Karma

Español, Deutsch, 中文, Français Anybody?

Internationalization is coming to Zendesk next week. So if your customers speak French, Spanish, Chinese, Dutch or Welch your Zendesk help desk can too.

Initially we will launch Spanish, Chinese and Danish language support, but additional languages are following soon thereafter. Zendesk i18n is a crowdsourced project, which means that you can make your own translations and even translation variations.

If you want to make a translation, please send an email to support@zendesk.com stating what language (or dialect) you want to translate Zendesk to, and the account name of your Zendesk help desk.

Twestivals Worldwide for Charity

On Thursday, 12 February 2009, 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.

Zendesk is a happy drinks sponsor for the Twestivals in Auckland, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Copenhagen and Boston, and hope thereby to encourage even more people to come.