A few months ago, Zendesk took an “across the board” look at our security capabilities, including the features in our product, the effectiveness of our key processes, the depth and breadth of our security organization, and the design of our security architecture. This effort, combining insights from senior management, engineering, product management, IT, and contracted third-party consulting and audit organizations, created a security to-do list. Here are some of the many security improvements we’ve made as a result.

People
Security governance and leadership is important to Zendesk’s management team. As such, I recently joined Zendesk to lead the security function. My primary focus is to further enhance our security program to ensure that we are being absolutely diligent in protecting customers and data.

Our team—a dedicated group of security engineers—is deeply experienced in such areas as penetration testing, security architecture, application and network security, and security monitoring. Additionally, we are augmented by qualified third parties who assist in security audits and discrete projects.

While security vulnerabilities can and will be exploited, people are often targeted first. According to the most recent Verizon Breach Report, “95% of all state-affiliated espionage attacks relied on phishing in some way – even the most targeted and malicious attacks often rely on relatively simple techniques.”  To address this threat, we’ve created several programs to enhance security awareness across various levels of the company, from training new employees in security fundamentals to a bi-monthly meeting of the Security Steering Committee to discuss the security roadmap, drive improvements, and address concerns.

Technology
Over the past few months, we’ve continued to develop our new data centers. At the same time, we’ve invested heavily in our security architecture, including enhanced intrusion detection capabilities, enhanced layer 7 firewalls—providing deeper stateful inspection—and enhanced traffic scrubbing capabilities, allowing us to more quickly mitigate DDOS attacks.

Process
Process is the glue enabling the repeatable and expected use of technology by people. Security processes allow for more consistent and reliable controls, ultimately providing a greater level of data protection. In March, we performed a full security audit of our product and infrastructure. Over the last few months we’ve developed and enhanced our many security processes, such as quarterly third-party security audits and a Responsible Disclosure Policy, giving researchers an avenue to safely test and notify us of vulnerabilities.

Product
We’ve dedicated the past few months to a product “security timeout” to bolster the security features in our product. While we have already launched a number of features to help you better secure your Zendesk environment, in the coming months, you will see many more. Stay tuned for more details this summer.

Like in chess, where it is important to not rely on one approach to be successful, an effective security program employs multiple layers. At Zendesk we take security seriously and will continue to grow, develop, and adapt our program to identify and address the latest threats. Likewise, we will continue to listen to your feedback to ensure that our product’s features are meeting your business and security needs.

Ryan joined Zendesk in April as vice president of security. He’s spent more than a decade working in the security field, most recently as  the information security officer and head of IT at Engine Yard and previously at eBay and PwC.

Read more about Zendesk security

The post Making the right moves for security appeared first on Zendesk.

Zen U. is now in session and coming to a city near you. Our next four stops are: Dallas, Austin, Toronto, and Chicago. Register for class and join the fun. Your degree in customer happiness awaits! (Take a look at the full schedule for more dates.)

Check out this photo from Zen U. San Francisco:

And here’s what recent attendees are saying about Zen U.:

“Zen U. was an environment where questions were appreciated, where I could talk easily with other people in customer service, where I could observe but also learn, and share my ideas as well. I really enjoyed coming to Zen U. and I can’t wait to come back again!”
-Allison Sasscer, FindTheBest.com

“I came to Zen U. because I was very interested in learning about Zendesk’s best practices. I use Zendesk to track all of our customer interactions and I want to make sure I know how to best use the system. I learned today that Zendesk offers a knowledge base with in-context help, and that’s something that I really need to do my job better.” -Christina Porter, Zuora

At Zen U., you might learn a handy tip or trick that will enable you to use Zendesk even better. The hot tip below (originated by a Zendesk customer at Zen U.) is a helpful, uncommon application of business rules. It’s offered here by Vancouver and San Francisco Zen U. instructor and Zendesk customer advocate Brandon Knapp.

Hot tip from Zen U.:

Did you know business hours can be used to prevent a response (made by one of your agents, but posted after standard business hours) from going out until the business hours start the next day?

You can do this by:

First, set up your business hours: Under Settings > Account > Localization.

Next, create a trigger with these specs (screenshot below):

Meet ALL of the following conditions:
Ticket is >> Updated
Comment is >> Present, and requester can see the comment
Within business hours? >> No
Current user >> is >> (agent)

Under “Perform these actions”: Add tags >> Delayed_Message

Note: Make sure to put this trigger at the top of your list, and add an ALL condition of Tags contains none of the following >> Delayed_Message to your end user notifying triggers. (By default, Notify Requester of received request, Notify Requester of comment update, and Notify Requester of solved ticket.)

Then, create an automation with these specs (screenshot below):

Meet ALL of the following conditions:
Tags >> Contains at least one of the following >> Delayed_Message
Hours since update >> (business) Greater than >> 0

Under “Perform these actions”: Email user >> (requester)
(This is a placeholder that will send your previously added comment)

Zendesk events are fun, free, and welcoming places to learn and meet great people. Come join us. We hope to see you there!

The post Zen U. and the College of Customer Happiness is coming to a city near you! appeared first on Zendesk.

The way you share product knowledge with your communities varies greatly from business to business and is determined largely by your self-service support strategy. Companies often refer to their “forum” or “knowledge base,” but these terms can have different meanings and connotations.

What’s the difference between a knowledge base and a forum?
When we consider the word forum, it stirs a sense of community. We expect to see a number of other customers participating, as well as brand advocates and representatives. The basic structure of a forum—threaded discussions—hasn’t changed much in the decades since the Internet began; largely because it’s a solid and flexible format and an effective platform for many-to-many communication.

The term knowledge base, on the other hand, evokes thoughts of user manuals and documentation—unchanging information presented in a logical order, as determined by the organization, rather than the community. With online delivery, a knowledge base can also be contextual—customers type out their questions and the knowledge base displays relevant topics to answer the question.

Which one do I need?
Each of these formats is a valid way of providing knowledge to your customers. Which one you choose depends on your product or service and your goals for customer self-service.

If your product is highly configurable, your customers may appreciate the opportunity to browse through a forum to compare what they’re doing with others. Reading about the different implementation types and experiences can inspire your customers. Or, they may discover more efficient ways of achieving an outcome. It’s the range of opinions and anecdotes that are found in active forums that draws customers in and keeps them coming back.

By using categories and topics, community discussions can be grouped into a sensible taxonomy in a forum. And with thoughtful community management, your forum can expand and grow as your customer community needs it to.

A similar taxonomy works for the presentation of more formal documentation, too. If customer engagement isn’t a part of your strategy, you’ll want to tightly control the content that appears in your knowledge base. In Zendesk, for example, you can allow only unrestricted agents and moderators to create topics. You can also define whether your customers can browse through your content or if you will use a search box to direct users to the information they’re seeking (or both).

Can I have it both ways?
Zendesk’s knowledge management platform is built on a forum structure because of the versatility it provides. You can set up your self-service portal in Zendesk to be a community-driven forum, a context-oriented knowledge base, or more in the style of an instructional user guide. Or better yet, it can be any combination that works for your business.

To learn more about how you can increase awareness of your forums and knowledge base, no matter what your style of delivery, read this post in… well… our forums.

The post Knowledge bases and forums: what’s the difference and does it matter? appeared first on Zendesk.

And don’t forget our popular Zen U. events–we have eight more scheduled this year in North America plus five in Australia/New Zealand, and they’re coming soon to Europe as well! Zen U. events are formalized, free training sessions led by the Zendesk team, and in the fine tradition of universities worldwide, beer is usually consumed.

Our recent tales from the road include the first user meeting of the quarter in Portland last week, kindly hosted and lead by Kavi. Erin Boyle, our product manager of our Salesforce integration (along with a bunch of other IT and education-focused features) was on-site and shared great insight on our roadmap and upcoming features.

In fact, product managers will be attending most of our groups this quarter, so take advantage of this awesome resource, and let them pick your brain, too–they love talking to Zendesk customers. As a special treat for users in San Diego, we are offering FREE training (usually provided only at Zen U.) during that user group.

Additionally, our team will be traveling to a few places these groups haven’t been before (Denver, Atlanta, Vancouver) on top of the 10 places we went last quarter. So why not join us for a beer and make sure you’re doing all you possibly can with your Zendesk?

Join us!

4/30: New York City

5/1: Austin

5/2: Vancouver

5/9: San Diego

5/14: San Francisco

5/22: Boston

5/29: Seattle

6/4: Atlanta

6/6: Washington DC

6/25: Denver

Learn more about Zendesk user groups

The post More great user groups coming! appeared first on Zendesk.

Initially, Starter funds made up a portion of our $1 million donation to San Francisco’s UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. More recently, Starter funds contributed to our $100,000 donation to charity:water, a fantastic non-profit that’s been bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations since 2006. They’ve also been a longtime Zendesk customer, and being able to support them “back” was incredibly gratifying.

As the next chapter in our Starter story begins, we’ve decided to do things a bit differently: We’ve asked our offices around the world to choose local charities they want to benefit from from our Starter plan subscriptions. Here are the organizations that our local teams selected.

Americas: St. Anthony Medical Clinic
A five-minute walk from our headquarters in San Francisco, the St. Anthony Medical Clinic provides free primary and specialty care to 3,400 uninsured patients through more than 12,000 visits a year. Approximately 90% of clinic patients earn less than $10,000 a year, and 25% are homeless.

Europe: Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and COSMIC
Our offices in Europe will be supporting two charities: Temple Street Children’s University Hospital in Dublin and COSMIC (Children of St. Mary’s Intensive Care) in London. Both organizations work tirelessly to provide top-notch, compassionate care for seriously ill children and heavily rely on donations to provide this care. Each hospital resides close to our local Zendesk office.

Asia-Pacific: Dry July and Zapuni
Dry July, which raises funds to create better environments and support networks for adult cancer patients and their families, is an organization our Melbourne has been working with for more than a year. Our new office in Tokyo selected Zapuni, which unites world-renowned musicians and visual artists to raise money for charity. Currently, the organization is focused on helping children who were affected by the Tohoku earthquake and devastating tsunami.

Read more about our Starter plan and sign up for a free trial

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No one working in customer service will be surprised that the research reveals that good service really does matter—and that bad service can harm your business. But you may be surprised by just how much it matters and how long the effect lasts.

Our latest infographic highlights some of the findings, finally getting to the good, the bad, and the ugly truths of how consumers—and their future spending—are influenced by the customer service they experience.

See the data behind the drawings in our report on customer lifetime value and customer service

Use the code below to re-use this graphic

[html]</pre>
<img title="The good, the bad, and the ugly: the impact of customer service" alt="The good, the bad, and the ugly: the impact of customer service" src="http://cdn.zendesk.com/images/blog-photos-new/customer_service_lifetime_value.jpg" width="615" />
<pre><em>Image originally posted on <a href="http://www.zendesk.com/blog/impact-of-good-customer-service-2013">Zengage, The Zendesk Blog</a></em>[/html]

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Notify target allows you to notify an external system about a new ticket or an important state change to a ticket. These systems include Twitter, JIRA, Salesforce, and many others. For an example, when a ticket is set to urgent, you would like an SMS sent to your CEO or an update sent to Twitter, Yammer, or Flowdock. Or maybe when a customer creates a ticket and selects “Sales” from a dropdown field, it creates a case in Salesforce. All of this is possible with notify target.

The latest tip of the week give you two useful examples of how you can use notify target to send out email notifications to an external email address.

Head to the forums to learn more

The post Tip of the week: notifying external email addresses appeared first on Zendesk.

Two years later, mobile devices are more integrated into our work lives than ever. And that’s why we’re excited to announce a redesigned Zendesk for iPad, which brings:

• A new reporting dashboard so you can get key metrics, like response times and ticket activity, at a glance
• An updated design with a new agent dashboard that provides meaningful ticket views and shortcuts to common ticket actions
• More context about your customers with complete support history on their profiles
• And many more features that you can learn about in the Zendesk forums

But more important than the features, we just want Zendesk to work how you work. (And let’s be real, you’re probably tapping away on your couch rather than on a mountain top.)

Download the free app from the App Store.

Learn more about Zendesk for mobile.

The post A support app optimized for couches and mountains appeared first on Zendesk.

Vivocha
Vivocha is an awesome online customer interaction platform for companies of all sizes. Use Vivocha to engage with your customers via a variety of different methods. Livechat, video, callbacks via phone, e-mail—all are channels that you can use to proactively reach out to your customer base. Help make your customers successful by proactively engaging them on your site while they are experiencing issues and then solving those issues in a timely fashion.

With the Zendesk integration, you can quickly and easily manage your Zendesk tickets in Vivocha. You can push a transcript of a conversation you’ve had in Vivocha as a new ticket in Zendesk, view existing tickets a repeat visitor has created, add comments to a ticket, and even attach a more recent conversation to an existing ticket.

Falcon Social
Falcon Social provides a SaaS software platform that allows marketing departments to create, launch, and measure social media campaigns in real time across multiple social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, and display ad networks. Falcon enables marketing teams working in HQ, in local marketing groups or dealerships, and in supporting agencies to collaborate, ensuring a consistent brand presence across the different social media types.

Integrating Falcon Social and Zendesk will give you a new way to moderate your social media content. The integration allows you to selectively engage in a meaningful two-way conversation with customers that contact you via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Instagram. Automatically tag the Zendesk tickets or assign them manually to a Zendesk agent as you monitor the conversation in Falcon Social. Use Falcon Social templates to answer commonly asked questions that are pulled directly from your library of macros in Zendesk.

CloudWork
Looking for a way to share data and integrate tasks among your cloud-based applications? CloudWork is an integration-as-a-service platform that allows you to connect your business apps and automate key business processes to keep all your information in sync. With CloudWork’s library of connectors and pre-built integrations, you can easily set up a variety of automated tasks so that all the systems you use share the same data. No more tedious copy and pasting of data from one system into another. Need to send a Zendesk ticket into Pivotal Tracker as a story? How about creating a note in Evernote from a Zendesk ticket? Want to create a Toggl task or client based off Zendesk information? These are just a few samples of what is possible with CloudWork.

3Manager
3Manager helps you manage your company’s printers and understand how they’re being used. Easily create a Zendesk ticket whenever a printer is low on toner, catch paper jams as they occur, or understand the life expectancy of your printers. There’s a wide variety of actions you can capture in the form of a Zendesk ticket. Are certain printers being used more than others in the office? Easily identify which printers are stressed under high loads. Get rid of underutilized hardware. See a history of trouble tickets created about a particular printer, all from one easy dashboard that 3Manager provides.

Check out an infographic: Mobile Apps in the Enterprise

The post We’re connected: four new integrations appeared first on Zendesk.