Hello, it’s Zendesk
We help companies build better customer relationships through our support, sales, and customer engagement products.
Now, we’re helping to spread a little gratitude.
Customer support has always been pretty thankless work. When the world went topsy-turvy, this got even more obvious. So, in the spirit of appreciation, we made this. It’s a small gesture, but we hope every thank you feels mighty to whoever’s on the other end.
Making it count
Zendesk is grateful to our social impact partners, far and wide. Thanks for doing important work, while leading with heart.
When it launched, Thank You Machine helped to amplify the work of organisations fighting inequity and racism, including Color of Change, ENAR Foundation, NAACP, and The Asia Foundation. Since then, our community has sent hundreds of cards to fundraise for World Central Kitchen, who are on a mission to strengthen communities with food. To celebrate Pride, our newest illustrations stand for LGBTQ equality, in support of the Human Rights Campaign.
Moments of
gratitude
In our upside-down world, empathy counts more than ever. Here’s how gratitude is showing up for some of our favorite customers right now.
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In our team meetings, we have a segment called “Attitude of Gratitude”. We start by sharing one thing that we’re grateful for in our personal lives. We aren’t looking for forced positivity; if you aren’t able to come up with something, we just want to know how you’re doing, if you’re comfortable sharing.
Next, we write down everyone’s names on a list in random order (normally we’d just sit in a circle, which would set the order — but the list makes do while we’re working remotely!). We go in the order of the list, stating a reason why we’re grateful for the next person. We change up the order every time, so we hear such a variety of sweet, funny, and kind reasons of gratitude. A lot of feelings come up that have made us a much closer team, and it’s a strong reason we have such a strong bond.
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To spread gratitude, our company has a Slack channel that’s entirely dedicated to thanking people who have done good work. It’s a busy channel, with several posts every day, complete with the best GIF reactions. For a bright spot or a “face with tears of joy” emoji, it’s our go-to.
Our Level 2 support team are big fans of giving praise. They handle support escalations from our Level 1 support team, and they always call out the best-crafted ones. It shows appreciation out loud, and we get to share examples among the team. Dealing with tricky support issues can be thankless at times, so this makes a real impact.
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Handling customers with compassion, day in and day out, can be emotionally draining work. To help our CX team stay energized and inspired, we pay attention to the small, exceptionally handled interactions that happen every shift. We celebrate each other on a public forum with virtual badges, and we share messages of gratitude from customers to our support agents. We find that kudos definitely goes a long way, allowing our team to navigate the ever-changing CX landscape with grace and flexibility.
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We’re lucky to have wonderful customers call our support team just to say thank you. In this time of isolation, we’re aware that this may be the only conversation a customer has had all day.
One of our favorite customers mails us poems she’s written about the agents who have helped her out. We’re grateful for every one of them. We display them — along with the many more letters of gratitude we receive from our customers — proudly on our office wall.
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At masuno.app, we’re continually overwhelmed by the gratitude we receive from people using our free mental health support service. They don’t simply approach us to request an appointment; they candidly open up and share their fears, their anxiety, their most intimate struggles.
We’re so touched and humbled by this pattern, and to honor them, we decided not to use macros for replies. We feel each one of them deserves our full attention and, we write up a special message for each one of them and every time. This is how we show respect and gratitude.
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We’re lucky enough to help people share gratitude everyday by sending flowers as a thank you. We see our customers sharing the love all day, from thanking others for finding a lost dog or caring for someone ill.
We try to practice gratitude internally, too. In the Customer Delight Team, we make it a habit to publicly shout out each other for helping out customers, or each other. Last week, everyone in our team received a pair of “delightful” socks, as an ode to working their socks off. It was a lovely way to recognize how hard we’ve been working — and to keep us connected as we work remotely.
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This summer, with the museum closed, we launched a project to give kids safe spaces to play outside. With the help of community artists and volunteers, we drew hundreds of hopscotch courses on sidewalks for kids to stumble on. Gratitude is often a two-way sidewalk: kids are taking their own chalk and adding to the artwork, refreshing areas that had been faded by rain or exercising their own creativity. Kids and families are grateful for a fun place to play in these tough times. And we’re grateful that they’ve seized on the spirit of the project and made it their own.
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During the pandemic, we find ourselves needing to help a whole lot more people with a whole lot less resources. Our supporters constantly find ways, big and small, to help. One of our supporters, a grandmother who regularly crochets cot blankets for us, recently received a government payment for pensioners to provide support during the current crisis. She decided to donate the full amount to us, knowing we’d honour her gift with gratitude and purpose. We’re nothing without our donors, and we’re inspired by them stepping up when we need them most.
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