Zendesk: tickets before, during and after the conversation

When Zendesk is connected, your agent knows who it is talking to. Before the conversation it reads the user’s open tickets. During the conversation it can look up a ticket and add an internal note to it. After the conversation it creates a ticket with the summary, the outcome and the details the agent collected.

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What you’ll need

• A Zendesk account
• Your Zendesk address, for example company.zendesk.com
• A Zendesk user who is allowed to give apps access

You do not need to create a key or a token. You sign in to Zendesk and give Verbu access.

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Connecting Zendesk to Verbu

1. Open the agent and click Integrations at the bottom of the menu.
2. Click Zendesk in the list.
3. Click Connect.
4. Type your Zendesk address. Only the first part: if the address bar says company.zendesk.com, you type company.
5. Sign in to Zendesk and approve the access.
6. Verbu asks whether you want the standard setup. Click Use the standard setup. You can change each item later.
7. Click Publish in the agent’s menu.

🎉 Your agent now knows the user’s tickets, can look them up and creates tickets for you.

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The standard setup

By default the agent creates the ticket after the conversation, not during it. So each conversation gets one ticket. If you click I will add them myself, we add nothing. You then add each tool yourself, as described below.

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The Zendesk page

The top of the page shows whether the connection works:

• Working (green): everything is in order.
• Needs a look (amber): Zendesk refused an access. The page tells you what to do.

Next to it are two buttons:

• ⟳ loads groups and other lists from Zendesk again. Use it after you create a new group in Zendesk.
• Remove integration disconnects. See Remove the integration.

Under Settings the page has four sections.

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General settings

Click General settings to open the section. It applies to every ticket the agent creates, both during and after the conversation.

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Before the conversation

Load the user’s open tickets. The agent looks the user up by phone number and reads their name and open tickets. So the conversation starts with the agent knowing what is already going on. Turn it on and off with the switch.

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During the conversation

These are the tools the agent can use while it talks to the user:

• Look up a ticket. The agent reads the status and the latest reply on one of the user’s own tickets.
• Add a note to a ticket. The agent adds an internal note to one of the user’s own tickets. Only your team sees it.
• Create a ticket during the conversation. The agent creates a ticket while it talks to the user.

If a tool says Not added to the agent, the agent does not have it yet. Click Add to give it to the agent. Then click Publish.

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What the agent may do on each channel

For each tool you choose what the agent may do on the phone and on chat. Chat also covers web calls and e-mail. By default the phone is set to Yes and chat to Ask. On chat the agent asks for the user’s phone number or e-mail and sends the code there. The agent can only see and write on tickets where the user is the requester. Create a ticket during the conversation needs no code, because it reads no existing tickets.

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After the conversation

Create a ticket in Zendesk. The agent creates one ticket with the summary, the outcome and the details it collected. The ticket also links back to the conversation in Verbu. If it says Not added to the agent, click Add. Once it is added, turn it on and off with the switch.

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When a ticket is created

By default the agent creates a ticket only when the conversation ends like this:

• Handed to a person
• Ready for follow-up
• Asked for a person

To change that, click Choose which conversations. It opens Automations, where you can choose other outcomes, a channel or an attribute. You can also choose Every conversation.

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If you also create tickets during the conversation

If both Create a ticket during the conversation and Create a ticket in Zendesk are on, the conversation still gets only one ticket. The ticket from the conversation is used, and no new one is created afterwards.

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The tools on the agent

The same tools also show under Train → Tools and under Deploy → Automations. They are the same tools, so a change in one place also shows in the other. Under Tools you can write when the agent must use a tool. Click the tool and fill in When should the agent use it?. For example “When the user asks about the status of a ticket”. If you leave it empty, the agent decides for itself.

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Users we do not know yet

The agent looks for the user by phone number and e-mail. If they are not in Zendesk, we create the user, so the ticket has a requester and the next conversation can find them again. You control this with Add the user to Zendesk when they are new. If you turn it off, the ticket is still created, but without a user on it.

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Times

Zendesk stores times in UTC. The agent says times in your own time zone, the one under Settings → General. If a ticket was updated at 19:56 Danish time, the agent says 19:56.

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Teach the agent with your help articles

Your Zendesk Help Center articles and your macros can teach the agent, so it answers in your own words.

1. Open the agent and click Content.
2. Click Add a source and pick Zendesk under System.
3. Under What to learn, choose what the agent may read. All of it is recommended.
4. Save.

We read the content in and keep it up to date. Solved tickets come later.

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Where you see it afterwards

In the Inbox. Open a conversation and the panel on the right leads with a Zendesk section holding Ticket # and Zendesk user. Both open Zendesk in a new tab. When there is no ticket yet it says Create ticket instead, so you can create one yourself. In Contacts. The people the agent looked up get a link to their Zendesk profile and a list of their open tickets. Under Activity. The Activity tab on the Zendesk page shows every call to Zendesk, and whether it worked.

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How it sounds in a conversation

User: Hi, I’m calling about my order. Agent: Hello Mette. I can see you have a ticket about a delayed delivery. Is that what this is about? User: Yes. Has anything happened? Agent: It was last updated yesterday at 14:10. Your team wrote that the parcel has been sent again. Shall I add a note that you are still waiting? User: Yes, please. Agent: Done. The team can see your note on the ticket.

The agent knew who was calling because it read the user’s tickets before answering. During the conversation it looked up the ticket and added a note to it.

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If something goes wrong

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Remove the integration

Click Remove integration at the top of the page and confirm. Verbu forgets the access and stops calling Zendesk. The agent’s Zendesk tools and automations are removed. Your tickets and users in Zendesk are untouched. If the agent learned from your Zendesk articles, we also ask what to do with that content:

• Leave the box empty and the agent keeps what it learned. It is no longer updated, because we cannot read from Zendesk without the connection.
• Tick the box and we remove the content, so the agent no longer answers from it.

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Next steps

• Talk to the agent under Test → Live test
• See the outcome of every conversation under Conversations
• Add more in Knowledge and training