Zendesk has further integrated its Web-hosted help desk application with Twitter, making it possible for customer service agents to monitor Twitter posts and act on them from within the Zendesk interface.
Previously, agents had to track Twitter with an external social media monitoring tool, and Zendesk would pull flagged posts into its system.
“Now Twitter is 100 percent embedded and integrated into Zendesk,” said Maksim Ovsyannikov, Zendesk’s vice president of product management.
Zendesk users set up keywords they want to monitor on Twitter and Zendesk automatically detects mentions thanks to what Ovsyannikov calls a “full blown integration” via the Twitter Search API.
Zendesk announced its initial Twitter tie-up in July, and customers requested heavily that the integration be deepened.
Zendesk’s application is designed to manage customer support processes, and customers increasingly use Twitter as a vehicle for voicing opinions — good and bad — about the companies they do business with.
“If you’re only tuned into formal support channels and not to social support channels like Twitter, you’re being negligent,” he said.
The new Twitter integration is available to all Zendesk customers free of charge, regardless of their subscription plans, which start at US$9 per customer service agent per month for up to three agents.