Help-desk software provider Zendesk today launched a series of partner programs in Europe, called Zendesk Ambassadors. Clients joining the program have the chance to earn money from referring new businesses to Zendesk.
The program is open to businesses of any size and includes access to private forums and meet-ups with the Zendesk team. Members would usually hope to go on to become Authorised Partners, a step up on the partner ladder. Being invited (and there’s no way in except by invitation) to join the Authorised Partners program means providing consulting, integration and migration services to Zendesk customers.
The announcement fits quite well into the cloud platform’s existing number of partner programs, which have been around for a few months but never seen a lot of media coverage. That’s a pity – they’re too interesting to ignore.
The Zendesk Incubator program has since its implementation three months ago invested about 250,000 Euro in young start-ups by offering each 3,000 Euro worth of Zendesk software for free. Incubator Partners include hackFWD, Seedcamp and TechHub. Any member of these communities is entitled to free Zendesk software for a year.
“We try to be very generous because we were a start-up not that long ago and many of our customers are start-ups who turned into very successful companies,” Zendesk COO Zack Urlocker told TechCrunch. One of the companies he talks about would be Dropbox or also Groupon, who joined the service when their team was only as big as ten people.
A second program worth noting is the “Better than Free” charity offer, which encourages companies to donate $20 to the UCSO Benioff Children’s Hospital to get the Zendesk Starter software.
“We were inspired by the work of Mark Benioff and pledged to work with our customers and partners to donate one million dollars [to the hospital],” said Zack.
Since Zendesk partnered with Twilio last year, their expansion plans are synched up and beginning to cover most of Europe.