By Business & Finance An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD today with Zendesk’s CEO Mikkel Svane and Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton TD officially opened the company’s new office in Grand Parade Dublin.
Zendesk, a provider of cloud-based customer service software, first set up its Development Centre in Dublin in 2012 with the support of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through IDA Ireland.
Zendesk enables organisations to provide superior service to their customers across multiple channels – from their websites, emails and phones to Facebook, Twitter and chat. It has more than 40,000 customer accounts providing customer service in than 140 countries and 40 languages.
The company announced the opening of its Dublin office at the end of 2012 with two engineers and a plan to grow to 25 by the end of 2013. Zendesk reached that number a month early and have more than doubled its headcount in the most recent six months to 52 employees. Zendesk officially launched its first European Data Centre in Dublin in March 2013.
Commenting at the official opening of the new office, An Taoiseach said: “The Government has an Action Plan for Jobs that is focused on growing a number of fast expanding areas such as digital and technology enterprise. As this sector continues to grow in Ireland I am delighted to mark this important milestone for Zendesk. The company’s rapid expansion is an endorsement of Ireland as an enterprise location and the taking on 3 floors of a new building illustrates both the company’s ambition and ability to attract talent in Ireland.”
Speaking at the launch, Mikkel Svane, CEO and founder of Zendesk, said: “This year the Dublin office has become the fastest-growing Zendesk office in Europe, as well as the largest office by number of employees, not only in Europe, but also outside of the United States. The Dublin office serves as one of Zendesk’s five product development hubs around the world with a team of highly skilled software engineers, as well as sales professionals and customer advocates.”
Colum Twomey, vice president of product engineering at Zendesk and based in Dublin, said: “Zendesk is committed to Dublin and its new location. We moved from a one-floor location to a new space with three floors and the capacity for as many as 150 people in the future, providing us with lots of room to continue to grow our team.
“We’re also committing to new community engagement projects for 2014 to show our commitment to setting down roots in Dublin. Those commitments include at least €30,000 in financial support to local charities; having at least 80 percent of our local employees engaged in at least one community activity in 2014; and 75 hours of volunteer service with local non-profits and community organisations.”
