Zendesk steps up its mission to bring customer service to where customers are

Customer service provider Zendesk is today releasing Embeddables, a mobile Software Development Kit (SDK), Web widget, and API that let you implement its customer service tools quickly and natively on any website, mobile site, application, or game.

Previously, the San Francisco-based company offered only the API to provide similarly decentralized access to its Help Center, FAQs, service tickets, live text chat, and customer feedback tools.

“What used to take a developer’s time to do, you can now do in two or three clicks,” VP of product and platform marketing Sam Boonin told VentureBeat.

He noted that the new Web widget incorporates technology the company acquired in April when it bought Zopim, a Singapore-based startup that provided live chat software.

Above: A mobile screen using Zendesk’s Embeddables

Image Credit: Zendesk

Dispersed customer service could become the primary vehicle for Zendesk, which went public in May. An example use case: Mobile social gamer GREE International is using Embeddables to install customer service inside its games. In the near future, the company envisions a TV watcher summoning live chat support via a click on a remote control, or a consumer talking with an agent through the screen in a smart refrigerator’s door.

Boonin noted that embedded customer service makes sense to the consumer, because it can live wherever users are.

And, he pointed out, it makes sense for the providing company, since multi-channel service can be managed from Zendesk’s platform, Embeddables generate contextual information about the device and app, and embedded help offers customers more ways to answer their own questions.

Embeddables are available at no additional cost to the company’s nearly 50,000 client businesses.

The company’s main competition, Boonin told us, is the customer service software provided by Salesforce and Oracle.

“We don’t differ in functions and features,” he said, “and we don’t talk about being a cheaper version.” Instead, Boonin pointed to Zendesk as being known for its “flexibility and simplicity.” On the mobile side, he said, “we don’t feel anyone [else] is tracking the needs” of performance, customer satisfaction and retention, and feedback.