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"Chicago's Sprout Social announced a partnership\u00A0this morning with the popular\u00A0Zendesk, to build a conduit between the two platforms, allowing for the companies' products to work together.\r\n\r\nIn its statement on the deal, the two firms hailed the partnership as allowing &amp;quot;social media support teams to not only create, but\u00A0also track and manage support issues through to resolution without leaving\u00A0their social media dashboard.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nSprout Social provides social media management for companies both large and small. TNW most recently covered the company in late 2011, when it launched the second version of its product:\r\nThe second generation product includes support for teams and agencies to manage a variety of accounts, while\u00A0maintaining\u00A0a single workflow to prevent confusion. I suspect that this was a feature driven by request, given that it was sorely missing in the earlier editions of Sprout.\r\nZendesk, which has raised more than $25 million thus far in its life, provides Internet-based customer support solutions. The synergy (I hate that word) is obvious: the two companies are complimentary. Their statement describing the deal hits on that point:\r\nThe new\u00A0Sprout Social integration with Zendesk allows both social and customer\u00A0service teams to work with full visibility toward faster resolution and a\u00A0frictionless experience for the customer.\r\nFinancial terms of the deal, if any exist, were not disclosed. TNW's take is that this will aid both companies in both improving their full product experience, and perhaps to drive new customers, if the services manage to cross-pollinate."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/08/sprout-social-and-zendesk-partner-up-for-social-media-fueled-customer-support/>