CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) Our commitment to social responsibility is unwavering as we enter 2018. One of our 2017 projects involved seeking evidence of what we believed to be true: that CSR activity and employee volunteering have a positive downstream impact on a business’s customer experience and satisfaction. To that end, our CSR team commissioned a study from Drexel University to help substantiate whether and how CSR activities influence how customer- facing employees at Zendesk interact with customers and how those interactions affect customer satisfaction. The main takeaways from the research include: • Customer support agents who volunteered at least once every two months were more than three times more likely to be rated among the top third in the company for empathy. • CSR can drive customer satisfaction by stimulating helping behaviors among Zendesk’s customer support agents. Helping behaviors are important because the more an advocate seeks help from others at the company, the higher their CSAT scores. The Zendesk Neighbor Foundation issued $2.1 million in grants in 2017 to its nonprofit partners across the globe. Meanwhile, Zendesk employees invested more than 9,500 engagement hours in their communities around the world. Zendesk’s CSR team also sponsored 28 pro bono customer accounts for a total of $596,000 worth of donated product. Zendesk Shareholder Letter Q4 2017 - 11
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