Zendesk Growing Strong in Asia, With New Office Soon Opening in Japan [INTERVIEW]

With over 20,000 customers around the world, cloud-based customer service software provider Zendesk has been growing at a fast pace since it was established in 2007. In over the past nine months alone it has more than doubled its customer base, and is beginning to make some progress in Asia. I recently spoke with Michael Hansen, Zendesk’s Asia Pacific VP, to find out more about the company’s plans in the region. He began operations for the company in the APAC region in July of last year, and spoke to me via Skype from the company’s Australia office.

Michael notes that among the first APAC regions to really get on board with Zendesk, the English speaking ones have been at the fore, as one might expect:

Australia and New Zealand are two of our big successes, and we have over 1500 customers there. I think both of those countries use technology in a very smart way, and we have more customers here per capita than we have anywhere else, really.

Zendesk growth in Asia

And while those have been strongholds for Zendesk up until now, Michael notes that the company’s real growth as the moment is in the rest of Asia, with nearly 2200 customers in entire APAC region to date (including Australia and New Zealand). He points to the Philippines as a prime example, noting 360 percent growth this year. The company has an office in Manila, and its numbers for the Philippines are likely far higher when you consider that many come to Zendesk via its US presence.

Zendesk is also doing well in other English speaking nations like Singapore (which has about 150 percent growth this year) and India where it has about 200 customers, including popular daily deals company SnapDeal.

Bridging the language gap

But can Zendesk make its way into regions that don’t speak much English? Michael notes that the service already is available in Spanish, Portuguese/Brazilian, Italian, German, as well as Chinese and Japanese. The latter is a big focus for Zendesk right now, as Michael explains:

If you look at Japan, which has always been small for us because of some of the language issues, we released our Japanese version back in May and have grown 110 percent since then. So it’s really moving.