Among customer service platform provider Zendesk's claims to fame are the company's embeddables—software development kits (SDKs) for Web and mobile environments that enable elements of customer service to be easily added to online customer experiences. Now the company is taking its solutions to app development platform Fabric (which Google recently acquired from Twitter) with a Zendesk kit that includes these embeddable solutions.
"We wanted to be where mobile app developers are," says Sam Boonin, vice president of product strategy at Zendesk. "There are millions of people that use Fabric every day and we wanted to get in front of them." The Zendesk kit for Fabric will now sit alongside other kits from other mobile solution providers, including Crashlytics, Stripe, and others. And customers that already use both Zendesk and Fabric have the added benefit of accessing both solutions in one place.
There are many challenges that come with adding customer service functionality to mobile apps, but the key obstacle is organizational, according to Boonin. App development is siloed from the marketing and customer service sides of the company, which can contribute to problems. "Product managers think they've built the perfect piece of software. They don't really consider what users will have to do if the 'buy' button doesn't work," according to Boonin. From the customer perspective, however, this is a mistake.
Users don't want to stop in the middle of a mobile game to track down a way to contact customer service because it's a hassle. During a shopping experience, an interruption could prove even more costly. If a customer has to navigate away from their cart to seek support, momentum may be lost, and the sale won't take place. "If a question pops up, customers want answers immediately. They don't want to go elsewhere," Boonin says. That’s why it's critical that companies are able to easily add in-app customer service functionality.
Zendesk's Fabric kit is by no means "Zendesk lite," however. Virtually all of Zendesk's capabilities are available through the embeddable SDKs. End users can submit a support ticket, click to chat, and will soon be able to click to call as well. "We want to be helpful to our customers, but ultimately it's all about powering the end consumer experience," Boonin says.