Practical Zendesk Administration

Foreword

We built Zendesk back in 2007 because we were frustrated with the quality of the customer service applications that existed at the time. The vast majority of these "solutions" were big, clunky, on-premise enterprise applications, distributed on CDs, and took forever to deploy. Even proof-of-concept projects often took months to complete. And when all was said and done, no one, especially the customer, was really ever satisfied.

Zendesk was the first, true cloud-based application that you could sign up for online, subscribe to online, and configure and launch online. And all of this could be done instantaneously. All it takes is the click a button, and you are on your way to providing top-notch customer service across your entire organization.

Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine software being distributed or packaged any other way. We revolutionized an entire industry in only five years, yet that handful of years seems like a lifetime ago.

We didn’t have a very advanced business plan or go-to-market strategy when we started out. In many ways, we approached building Zendesk in the same way a carpenter approaches crafting a new piece of furniture. It was all about creating something beautiful and unique, imagining how people would use it, looking for form and function to meet and create new meaning.

Of course, when you set out to do something that changes everything, your goal is to do just that. Still, it is nonetheless a very humbling experience to watch your product become wildly successful. It is always a remarkable experience to meet people who spend their entire workday in your product and love using it. And to meet company founders who tell you how your product has changed the way they do business—well, it’s the kind of encouragement that spurs you on to do even bigger, greater things.

Getting acquainted with Stafford has been one of these equally humbling experiences. Here’s somebody who knows the product better than we, the founders. He can make even the most complicated concepts seem simple. It’s why we’ve trusted him to train audiences around the globe to configure and administer Zendesk. He has helped hundreds of businesses use Zendesk to transform their own customer service operations. Stafford has taken the furniture that is Zendesk, and through his passion and dedication, placed it in a beautiful surrounding and given it additional purpose.

I couldn’t imagine a better person to write a book on Zendesk administration than Stafford. Reading the chapters are like reading the notes we never wrote when we designed the product. Stafford’s ability to enlighten readers on how to use the product better and the reasons for the design decisions in Zendesk never ceases to impress us.

Passion is what drove Zendesk’s founders to build the product before you today. But it is the success of our customers that built our company. More than 20,000 organizations around the world rely on Zendesk for great customer service and engagement. We believe Stafford has been very central to this success and is the best man help you successfully implement Zendesk, and I praise him for his effort in making Zendesk administration easy. Happy reading.

—Mikkel Svane

Founder and CEO of Zendesk