While more and more organizations are turning to social media and other online channels to enhance their customer support, it seems that no matter how sophisticated the technology gets, there’s still no substitute for picking up the phone. In fact, almost 80 percent of customers across industries still prefer to call for support when they need help with a product or service.

So we decided to turn on our friend Buddhy’s headset. Today, we introduce Voice functionality as a new, native channel in Zendesk.

Offering a phone number to call for help is a critical path to providing exceptional service to your customers. Historically however, this has not been a straightforward and easy proposition. We’ve probably all had some bad experiences calling for support. Long hold times, confusing menus, and third-party call centers that couldn’t solve problems are all too familiar themes. To route and track calls appropriately, behind the scenes call centers were built with major IT projects, expensive hardware, and more acronyms than a teenagers text conversation (PBX and ACD anyone?).

Set Up a Call Center in Minutes

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. Through Zendesk Voice, we have simplified the art of the call center, making it easy to buy, implement, and use. You can literally have a ready-to-go call center up and running in a matter of minutes. 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.

You can provide exceptional service over the phone, and we want to be the backbone that supports your doing so. Check out our forum post on how you can get your call center up and running right away.

Phone Support That Increases Productivity

Customers are already seeing these benefits take shape. “Previously we had to use separate clients for email and phone support – this was a real pain point when trying to keep track of everything and respond to customers in a timely manner,” says Sander Daniels, director of user happiness at Thumbtack. “Over the last month, however, we’ve moved our entire phone support to Zendesk Voice and are already seeing a significant increase in productivity.”

Managers like Sander can also monitor and manage the phone staff with our real-time dashboard that analyzes all voice activity and take corrective action immediately if they see and trouble spots. It’s a comprehensive call center that’s easy to set up and execute. Whether you are a one-person startup or a thousand-plus Enterprise, our new Voice functionality is an awesome addition to your support.

Check out Zendesk Voice today. You can try it out for free and start talking live immediately. Love your phone support!