Zendesk has announced Cotton On as its 1,500th Australian customer since opening the doors of its Melbourne office in September 2011, with the company now celebrating its 25,000th customer globally.

The cloud-based customer service company, which also provides customer service software to a number of Australian companies, including LJ Hooker, Kwik Kopy and Lonely Planet, has also signed more than 350 customers in New Zealand during the same period.

New customers to sign up in New Zealand include online gaming company SmallWorlds and Wintec, one of New Zealand’s largest Institutes of Technology.

“We’re really pleased that Cotton On has chosen Zendesk. Australia is an important market for us and we are committed to helping our customers improve the service they provide," says Michael Hansen, Zendesk’s vice president and Asia Pacific MD.

"2012 was an exciting year for us, we opened our new development centre in Melbourne, expanded our team and launched the new, improved Zendesk.

“We are confident that our dedication to continually improving our product offering will continue to pay dividends in this market in 2013 and beyond.”

With almost 90% of Zendesk’s Australian customers falling into the small to medium-sized business category, Hansen expects this to be a continued market focus in the next 12 months.

“What Zendesk provides is an easy to use customer service solution that is quick to set up, requires little training, scales up with your business and offers incredibly good value for money," he says.

"While these are all attractive selling points for businesses of any size, we’ve found they are resonating particularly well with small to mid-sized businesses.

“With our eye on the SME space, we will also look to diversify into vertical market sectors.

"At the moment, most of our client base comes from the IT services and consultancy, web applications or software arenas.

"While we will continue to reap the rewards in these areas, we’ll also be looking to grow our share of the pie in other sectors too."

The Zendesk team added 14 new employees in 2012 and has 10 new starters coming on board in early 2013.

The announcement follows a number of milestones for the company during the past six months, including the launch of the next generation of its cloud-based customer service platform, the completion of U.S.$60 million of new financing led by Redpoint Ventures and the opening of its new APAC development centre in Melbourne, which will create 20 new jobs by the end of 2013.