Zendesk has announced the appointment of Craig Flower as Chief Operating Officer (COO), as the company accelerates its transition toward becoming an AI-first organisation and strengthens cross-functional execution to better serve customers.
In his new role, Flower will be responsible for driving operational alignment across the business, improving customer engagement and service delivery, and accelerating the adoption of AI across Zendesk’s products and internal operations. The appointment reflects Zendesk’s focus on scaling AI-led service innovation while maintaining execution discipline across teams.
Flower previously served as Chief Information Officer at Zendesk, where he led initiatives to modernise internal systems, deploy AI and machine learning capabilities, and improve collaboration across the organisation through enhanced digital tools and insights.
Advancing AI-first operations and execution
Commenting on the appointment, Tom Eggemeier, Chief Executive Officer of Zendesk, said the move reinforces the company’s commitment to operational speed and customer-centric execution in an AI-driven services landscape.
“AI is fundamentally reshaping the future of customer service, demanding new levels of speed and efficiency,” Eggemeier said. “Craig is a proven leader with a strong focus on customers, operations and transformation. His ability to bring teams together and translate strategy into measurable outcomes will be critical as we continue to deliver value at scale.”
As COO, Flower will focus on maximising customer value from Zendesk’s AI-powered tools by simplifying adoption, strengthening support models, and encouraging knowledge-sharing across the ecosystem. This includes building a centre of excellence where customers and employees can exchange best practices and insights on AI-driven service delivery.
He will also work on streamlining internal processes, aligning operational functions, and enabling faster execution across product, sales and service teams.
“Modern COO roles sit at the intersection of customer experience, business strategy, technology and operational excellence,” Flower said. “Zendesk has strong momentum and a clear strategy. Our focus will be on execution, expanding what already works, accelerating AI-first transformation across how we serve and operate, and delivering measurable results through efficient, modern processes.”
Industry experience
Before joining Zendesk, Flower served as Chief Technology Officer at TriNet, where he led product replatforming initiatives, digitised core business processes, and accelerated the company’s move to the cloud.
Earlier in his career, he spent over two decades at Hewlett-Packard, serving as Chief Information Officer and playing a key role in large-scale IT and process transformation programmes that supported business model innovation, revenue growth and margin improvement.