Zendesk Themes
Make the answer easy to find.
Make it look like you.
We design and build Zendesk Guide themes for ANZ support teams. Your help centre matches your website, and the navigation follows what customers search for.
- Marketplace or fully custom themes
- Built on the supported Guide framework
- Zendesk Premier Partner in APAC
Who we work with
Trusted by 300+ organisations across ANZ
The record
- Since 2014Supporting ANZ service teams
- 75%Fewer daily tickets at an audio tech company
- 1,000+Zendesk solutions delivered across ANZ
- PremierZendesk Partner in APAC
Customer stories
Three help centres, rebuilt for self-service
Timely
3.75:1
→
11:1
Help centre visits per ticket raised, after three years with us. Next target: 13:1.
“The platform now enables things we simply couldn’t do before.”
Lisa Kerr · Head of Global Support
Australian audio technology company
100k
self-service interactions a month, against 10,000 that reach an agent. 800+ articles rewritten, plus AI chat for the harder cases.
“SuccessCX helped us leverage the newer functionality that boosted customer experience.”
Global Head of CX
Retail Zoo
Help centres rebuilt for Boost Juice, Betty’s Burgers, Salsas Fresh Mex and CIBO Espresso, under one service standard.
Where to start
Theme or custom build?
It depends on your help centre.
A marketplace theme and a custom build are different jobs.
Pick the situation closest to yours. Not sure? We’ll go through your help centre with you.
You’re still on the default theme
The stock Guide theme works, but it looks like everyone else’s. Customers coming from your website feel lost and raise a ticket.
What we do first
- Check search data for what customers can’t find
- Fix the categories before the design
- Choose a marketplace theme or a custom build
A marketplace theme will do the job
You want your help centre on brand without a full design project. One of our marketplace themes gets you most of the way.
What we do first
- Pick the theme that suits how customers browse
- Set images, icons and fonts with no code
- Restructure categories and articles before launch
You need a fully custom theme
Your brand rules are strict, or customers need something a marketplace theme can’t do.
How Retail Zoo rebuilt four help centresWhat we do first
- Match the header and footer to your website
- Design a layout for every page type
- Plan the features no stock theme has
Your theme breaks when Zendesk updates
Old custom code clashes with each Zendesk release, so every update is a gamble.
What we do first
- Find out what changed in the code
- Rebuild on the supported Guide framework
- Build brand rules into the theme
Marketplace themes
Zendesk Guide marketplace themes
Custom Zendesk themes
Custom Guide themes, built to match your website
What a custom theme includes
- Easy to maintain: change links and colours without editing code.
- Your design or ours: we create it in house, or build from your designers’ mock-ups.
- Made to deflect: every page points people to an answer first.
| Default theme | Marketplace theme | Custom theme | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Change hero image | Included | Included | Included |
| Assign images or icons to category tiles with no code | Not included | Included | Included |
| Upload custom fonts with no code | Not included | Included | Included |
| Clone your website’s header and footer | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Custom features specific to your end users’ needs | Not included | Not included | Included |
Client work
Help centres from brands we’ve worked with
Who we help
Three roles that notice
a weak help centre first.
01
CX leaders and support managers
There’s a help centre. Customers raise tickets anyway.
- Good articles nobody finds
- Searches that return nothing
- Repeat questions self-service should catch
02
IT and operations leaders
Someone edited the theme code once. Now nobody will touch it.
- Code that breaks every release
- No record of what changed
- Brand fixes waiting on a developer
03
Founders and business leaders
Your help centre looks like another company’s.
- Off-brand fonts and colours
- Self-service that isn’t cutting cost to serve
- No clear view of its value
What makes us different
Looking good is
the easy part.
Structure is what
helps people find answers.
Categories and navigation come first. Styling comes last.
The team behind our themes · Melbourne
What we ask first
01
What do customers search for and not find?
02
Which articles should be within two clicks?
03
How should it work on a phone?
04
Who looks after it when Zendesk updates?
Why SuccessCX
Most theme work
stops at the colours.
Plenty of people can restyle a help centre. Here’s where our builds differ.
Our methodology
Three phases.
Review, build, keep it current.
Discover
Help centre review
We go through your help centre, search data and articles, and find where customers give up.
What you get
A list of where self-service fails, and why.
Design
Theme design and build
We design to your brand and rebuild the navigation around search.
What you get
A tested theme, ready to launch.
Deploy and optimise
Launch and maintain
We launch, track search and deflection, and update the theme as Zendesk changes.
What you get
A help centre that still works after the next Zendesk release.
The people
Your help centre stays
with the team that built it.
One team reviews, designs, launches and supports it. There’s no handover, so nothing gets lost.
- Paul Bichsel Founder and CEO Focused on the human elements of customer experience, and on saying the unpopular thing early. LinkedIn
- Alver Tuazon Director of Operations Two decades in senior CX leadership, turning customer operations into high-performing engines. LinkedIn
- Hamish Lang Service Delivery Manager Keeps projects moving and makes sure clients see real results from the Zendesk investment. LinkedIn
- Ash Williamson CX Solutions Specialist Turns ideas into working service design, with people kept at the centre of the journey. LinkedIn
- Annalise Wright Project Coordinator Keeps every project on track and every person clear on what happens next. LinkedIn
Start here
Not sure the theme
is the problem?
Sometimes it’s the articles. The CX Health Check scores five pillars, and knowledge is one of them.
- 01 Take the 5‑minute assessment Short questions about your platform, data, knowledge base, operations and people.
- 02 Get your score A score for each pillar, so you can see whether your help centre content is the weak spot or something else is.
- 03 Keep the report Download it and take it to whoever owns the help centre.
- 04 Talk it through with us If it’s the theme, we scope the fix from there. If it isn’t, we’ll tell you.
Ready when you are
Your customers are already
looking for the answer.
Help them find it.
Tell us where customers get stuck today.
If a marketplace theme is enough, we’ll say so.
What happens next
01
We look at your help centre and what customers search for.
02
We tell you which kind of theme fits.
03
You get a scope. Design starts from there.
Zendesk themes, explained
How Zendesk themes and help centre theming work
A Zendesk theme controls how your Guide help centre looks and how customers move through it. It sets the page templates, styles, navigation and search layout that sit on top of your articles. You can keep the default theme, install one from the Zendesk Marketplace or have a custom theme built. SuccessCX is a Melbourne-based Zendesk Premier Partner in APAC that designs and builds Guide themes.
What is a Zendesk theme, and what can you customise?
A Guide theme is a package of page templates, CSS, JavaScript and settings. The templates cover each page type in your help centre: the home page, categories, sections, articles, search results and the request form. They're written in Curlybars, Zendesk's templating language, so the theme can pull in your articles, categories and user details.
Copenhagen is the standard theme Zendesk ships, and a lot of help centres never move past it. Its settings let an admin change the logo, colours and fonts without code. Anything beyond that, like a new home page layout or a header that matches your website, means editing the theme code.
If you run more than one brand in Zendesk, each brand's help centre has its own theme. If Guide isn't set up yet, the theme is usually part of a wider Zendesk implementation.
How to choose a theme from the Zendesk Marketplace
The Zendesk Marketplace lists themes from Zendesk partners and independent developers. They look similar in the screenshots, so check what sits underneath before you install one:
- Is it built on Zendesk's current theme framework, so it keeps working through Guide updates?
- Which changes can your admins make in the settings, and which need a developer?
- How does it handle long category lists and search results on a phone?
- Who supports it, and how do updates reach you?
Start with how your customers browse. A theme built around big category tiles suits a help centre with a few clear topics. A search-led theme suits one with hundreds of articles. Our guide to designing a self-service portal goes through that structure work step by step.
Zendesk help centre templates and customisation beyond the theme
People searching for Zendesk templates usually mean one of two things. Theme templates control the layout of each page type, and changing them is theme work. Article templates live in the knowledge base and give your writers a set structure to start from, such as a troubleshooting article or a policy page.
Both affect self-service. A good theme can't rescue articles that are hard to scan, and well-written articles still get lost in a poor layout, so we review them together.
Customisation can also reach past the look of the help centre. The theme can point each article to the right request form, show different content to signed-in users, or bring promoted articles to the top of the home page. Small connections like these often decide whether a customer finds the answer or raises a ticket.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a custom Zendesk theme take to build?
It depends on the scope more than the design. The main factors are how many brands and page types you need, whether your designers supply mock-ups or we create them, how much of the category structure changes, and how quickly your team can sign off. Swapping in a marketplace theme with your branding is a much smaller job than a custom build. We confirm the timeline in the scope, after reviewing your help centre.
Can you work with our existing Zendesk theme?
Yes. We start by reading the current code to see what's been changed and why. Sometimes a few fixes and a settings clean-up are enough. If the theme is built on an older framework or has custom code that clashes with Zendesk releases, we rebuild it on the supported Guide framework and keep the parts your customers rely on.
What is the Zendesk Copenhagen theme?
Copenhagen is Zendesk's standard Guide theme, and it's what a new help centre uses by default. It's responsive and maintained by Zendesk, which makes it a sound base. Its limits show when you need your website's header and footer, a different home page layout or features your customers keep asking for. Many custom themes start from Copenhagen and build on it.
Will changing our Zendesk theme break article links?
Not on its own. A theme changes how pages look, not where your articles live, so the content stays in Guide and article links stay as they are. Category and section pages change only if you restructure them as part of the project. If the review shows the structure needs work, we plan those changes and any redirects with you before anything goes live.
How much effort does a theme project need from our team?
Your team's part is mostly input and sign-off. We need access to Guide, your brand guidelines or design files, and someone who can tell us what customers ask about most. Your team reviews the design and tests the theme before launch. The build, testing on real devices and the launch itself sit with us.
Who looks after the theme after launch?
The people who scope and build your theme also support it after launch. That's a deliberate operating model: there's no handover to a separate support desk, so the code and the reasons behind each design decision stay with the work. Your admins can still change colours, images and links through the theme settings. For ongoing changes as Zendesk releases new features, Zendesk Assist covers that work.