Zendesk Empowers New Connections through Global Scalability and Superior Localization
Founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2007, Zendesk aims to bring a sense of calm to the chaos of customer service. Now headquartered in San Francisco, Zendesk’s software-as-a-service products are designed to simplify business complexity and help companies make connections with their customers. Zendesk’s products now extend beyond customer service to sales and employee experience. More than 100,000 companies in 160 countries and territories use Zendesk’s products, and its global workforce tops 5,000 employees.
Challenge
A Strategic Localization Partner For Rapid Expansion
Ease of use, a wide variety of channel solutions, extensive integrations, and AI have helped make Zendesk a leader in customer support software. Zendesk began implementing international solutions in its early days and now supports close to 31 languages including 5 variants. This has resulted in localization becoming a key aspect of the company’s business strategy and success.
Zendesk’s localization team translates all manner of content related to Zendesk’s products, including UI labels, knowledge base articles, legal materials, video, images, customer surveys, training and more. Zendesk’s translation processes were managed by external vendors without significant visibility into the workflow.
As Zendesk expanded globally, its manual processes became increasingly untenable. The company required a solution that could scale with its rapid growth.
“We wanted to make sure we could work flexibly with different partners and scale as needed,” explained Yoko Drain, Senior Director of Product Globalization at Zendesk.
Zendesk wanted to own, maintain, and control its Translation Memories (TM). It also needed greater access to its localization data in order to make better-informed decisions and strengthen its localization processes to improve costs, efficiency, and quality.
We support around 31 languages including 5 variants and operate in multiple markets worldwide, and we are continuing to expand. The complexity of managing this without visibility and control can be overwhelming.
YOKO DRAIN
Sr. Director of
Product Globalization
Zendesk
Solution
Zendesk Enhances Global Reach with Integration of AI-Powered Phrase Platform
To meet its localization goals, Zendesk selected Phrase and initially implemented several components of Phrase’s enterprise Localization Platform. Subsequently it introduced the plugin for the collaborative design tool Figma, which enabled Zendesk’s design team to test localized designs across different languages.
Zendesk and Phrase went on to formalize their partnership that led to a successful integration between the two platforms. This integration allows Zendesk customers to localize their help center content. As part of its five-year AI roadmap, Phrase has expanded its offerings within the Zendesk ecosystem by introducing Phrase Language AI for Zendesk Support to translate conversations between customers and agents in real-time. This solution enables customer support agents to communicate in any language with fast, reliable, and high-quality translations, significantly saving time and reducing costs.
“Advanced Analytics from Phrase helps us see the health of our assets, monitor TM leverage, and understand the quality of machine translation outputs. This allows us to schedule engine training cycles based on AI-driven insights,” states In Ju Woo, Director of Product Globalization.
We needed a solution that could scale with our business, offer transparency, and provide detailed insights into our translation processes. Phrase checked all these boxes and more.
In Ju Woo
Director of
Product Globalization
Zendesk
Explore the measurable impact of Phrase on Zendesk’s operations
Why Phrase?
Zendesk chose Phrase after evaluating several technology solutions. The decision was influenced by Phrase’s roadmap, focus on automation, user-friendly interface, Advanced Analytics, and strong API capabilities.
Yoko notes: “With Phrase’s AI capabilities, we can monitor and QA the quality of translations more effectively. The AI solutions help us identify areas that need improvement and ensure our translations meet the required standards”.
Our partnership with Phrase helps us make the right decisions and helps with anything new that comes up. We have an open dialogue, and I trust Phrase to have the right solutions at the right time, so that we can grow with Phrase.
YOKO DRAIN
Sr. Director of
Product Globalization
Zendesk
BENEFITS
- Superior Insights: The Phrase Platform gives Zendesk 100% visibility into its localization processes. The company can easily manage a range of content types, update existing workflows, creating new workflows as needed.
- Impressive Time and Cost Savings: Advanced Analytics has enabled Zendesk to cut localization project analysis time from hours to minutes, achieving a 96% time saving. Additionally, shifting from human to machine translation with Phrase has reduced translation costs by over 25%, further boosting efficiency.
- Game-changing Automations: With Phrase, Zendesk is well on its way to automating many of its manual localization processes. Automating previously manual processes using preset tools within Phrase resulted in 100% improvement for some areas.
- Improved Quality and Consistency: By leveraging Phrase, Zendesk could maintain and improve the quality of its translations. In Ju mentions, “We now have full control over our translation memory, ensuring high-quality translations and consistent terminology usage across all languages. This has been a game-changer for us”.
- Flexibility and Scalability: Since 2019, Zendesk’s revenue has surged by over 164% with new products and market expansions. As Zendesk’s trusted localization technology partner, Phrase has streamlined processes, accelerated time-to-market, and ensured high-quality translations. This support has enabled Zendesk to scale at speed and integrate acquisitions seamlessly.
Conclusion
Zendesk + Phrase = Driving Global Scalability and Superior Localization
The partnership between Zendesk and Phrase has significantly enhanced Zendesk’s ability to scale rapidly, supported by superior localization capabilities, enabling it to deliver high-quality customer support globally.
Zendesk is testing the most recent Gen AI innovations from Phrase and is always excited about Phrase’s product roadmap. It plans ahead to test new products that will be released in the future. “Our operations grow together with what Phrase can offer and there are always new innovations planned, so we are looking forward to seeing more exciting capabilities,” says In Ju.
Zendesk is also considering a Zendesk-Phrase connector. Zendesk has its own tool internally, but with use cases changing, a connector could potentially cover most of those needs.
With Phrase, Zendesk expects to add even more automations in the future to stay ahead of the newest developments in the space, particularly in AI and MT (Machine Translation).
Phrase gives us the ability to automate many processes, allowing us to use AI solutions effectively. With the right automation in place, we can scale our operations further and continue to improve quality.
