Zendesk adds voice capability thanks to Twilio

Zendesk is a popular web-based customer support platform (e.g. help desk, ticketing, etc.) launched just three years ago. Some notable customers include the Denver Broncos, Gawker Media, Groupon, OpenTable, Sears, Sony Music, Tumblr, Yammer, and University of Lincoln (UK) — a good mix of market verticals and sizes.

Now with Twilio-powered Zendesk Voice, businesses can voice-enable their Zendesk system to provide call center features in mere minutes. According to Zendesk’s blog:

…Control your greetings, wait-times and voicemail rules, and call routing. You can even choose your hold music. So if smooth jazz or yacht rock is your thing, then go for it!

What’s most exciting about Voice is how easy and convenient it makes phone support. Agents can take calls directly with their computer, desktop phone, or even on-the-go by routing calls to their mobile phone. And then the best part is a ticket is automatically created with every call, and recorded transcripts are embedded into that ticket. You won’t lose any details from a call. For the customer, there’s no more having to hunt around for that scrap of paper containing the vital details from your call. For the agents, there’s no more having to track down which agent took the original call or the need to bounce a customer around from agent to agent.

Sounds like an attractive solution for a company in need to bring up a contact center quickly. Most impressed with how Zendesk Voice offers screen-pop, call recording, and automatic transcription of voicemails, all based in the cloud.

And at $0.05 per minute — phone number (no toll-free numbers yet), voicemail transcription, and call recording included — this is close to a no brainer for a business looking to expand its customer service options without having to commit to hardware and software purchases for a premise-based solution.

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Tagged as: cloud, twilio, zendesk, zendesk voice