It doesn't matter whether the product is JIRA, Confluence, GreenHopper, or Zendesk, Rocketeers on the CustomWare consulting team will often hear the same story from our customers: "We've started using (insert software product) and already grasp the features, but we don't know whether we're getting the most value from the product."
Fortunately, the range of "Practical Administration" books by the O'Reilly authors on the CustomWare team solve this problem. The latest in the series, "Practical Zendesk Administration" by Stafford Vaughan, contains 189 pages of best practices, drawn from the author's experience of delivering training to Zendesk customers worldwide. This book takes the most advanced features of the Zendesk product (including the New Zendesk) and simplifies them to the point where the reader will not only understand the feature, but they'll also understand the common pitfalls that other companies experience with the feature, and how to avoid them.
According to Carson Sweet, Co-Founder and CEO at CloudPassage (a customer of our Zendesk consulting team):
"Stafford has led hundreds of top companies to successful next-generation customer support. You won't find a greater expert on practices and approaches for Zendesk-driven customer support. If you're responsible for a Zendesk deployment, get this book now."
Practical Zendesk Administration covers the following topics, ordered in such a way that the reader will find it easy to configure their Zendesk instance while simultaneously reading the book:
- Customize your Zendesk customer service tool with your brand
- Create tickets using email, voice, chat, feedback tabs, and social media
- Implement security measures, including ways to safely login from social media sites
- Generate profiles and permissions for your Zendesk customers, agents, and administrators
- Understand the data capture lifecycle, and control the fields your customers are required to fill out
- Apply techniques for making your agent process more efficient
- Modify Zendesk to reflect your existing customer service process
- Use forums to provide self-service support for your customers
Axel Focht, Head of Customer Service at Groupon UK, IRL & DK, had this to say about the text:
"This book comes at the right point in time. We have already been using Zendesk for more than a year and a half, and feel we have a very good knowledge of the system, but this book provides additional hints and fresh insights into the system that have been really helpful."
Practical Zendesk Administration is now available for purchase through Amazon or O'Reilly, and is also available as a Kindle ebook. To get your copy, visit www.
If you're interested in learning from the author face-to-face, Stafford will be presenting the training event at the last stop on the Zendesk Customer Hero tour in New York City, October 26. He will also be attending the upcoming Zendesk user groups at the Box office on October 24, and Zendesk HQ on November 1.
