Today we’re releasing Zendesk for iPad. And we’re extremely proud of it. It has never been easier to stay in touch with your customers.

The iPad app is not a reskinned mobile web interface or a revamped iPhone app. It’s an entirely new app built specifically for the iPad. It’s the complete agent interface optimized for the iPad’s multi-touch interface. You can access all your views, access the complete ticket conversation (including the event log), answer your emails or tweets, look up requesters, and reassign or resolve tickets. Everything. Including macros and canned responses. Search is built-in, so you can perform full-text searches on your entire request history and look up tickets by their ticket ID.

We’re also introducing a few new features unique to the iPad. One is the capability to bookmark tickets, so you easily can come back to them later. Handy when you want to keep an eye on how a certain customer or issue is being dealt with. Also, we have a new real-time ticket activity stream. It informs you of those tickets that are assigned to you, and those tickets that have changed priority or received new comments. And it integrates with the iPad push notification framework.

The awesome Zendesk customer advocate team has been equipped with iPads and has used the iPad app for the last month or two. Aside from providing great feedback during the beta period, they’ve also been a great testament to how the iPad paradigm is changing business and work behaviors. Workforces have been mobile for quite a while now, but the iPad is really making the mobile experience instantaneous, agile, and fluid.

I personally have been using the iPad rigorously over the last month. At Zendesk, we touch some 4oo to 500 customer service requests every day. And I actually feel capable of browsing all the conversations in a super convenient and casual manner using the iPad app. It’s helping me stay on top of our customer conversations and basically sense the pulse of our customer engagement. I think it is amazing that with only a few flicks of a screen, this device can go from being my three-year old’s favorite toy to my complete customer intelligence tool, without ever having to leave the sofa.

We’re excited to release the new iPad on Valentine’s Day. It’s available from the iTunes App Store and completely free for all of our customers. New prospects can even sign up for a free 30-day trial directly via the app. You can read more and get a demo here. And please spend a few minutes watching my interview with Steven Yan, product manager for the iPad app, as he talks me through the considerations and thoughts behind the product. And don’t forget to read his post from our support forums here.

Enjoy your new iPad app. Happy Valentine’s Day and love your help desk!