Preface

Today, mid-March 2020, when COVID-19 is on the rise and many companies are affected, we need to support each other even more than usual. We all are facing very special management and productivity challenges doing customer service these days. And I think that knowledge is the best weapon against those challenges.

That's why I decided to share another piece of my professional knowledge with the community. Last time I posted about my approach toset up or optimize Zendesk using Customer Journey idea. I know this post might sound a bit too theoretical - so I would like to share more practical stuff today.

I have been doing professional Zendesk consulting for the last 9 years. One of my best-selling services is Zendesk Health Diagnostics. I have diagnosed many Zendesk accounts – from small one-agent accounts to big enterprise-scale ones – and collected a lot of cases. But all the time I was facing the same repetitive issues/optimizations.

The Checklist

检查表是一个伟大的工具来组织任何活动vities. I have organized all optimizations into groups based on the area of Zendesk and/or functional type of optimization. But technically you can follow them in any order you like.

For almost all points I have placed the links to Zendesk Help Center articles where you can find the details of the implementation. Sometimes you will find the screenshots with real examples of discussed setups which allows you to reproduce them easily in your Zendesk.

BRANDING

1. Add avatars in agent profiles
   寻找更多的人类比无名Support Agent. You can use your real photos or create custom avatars using tools likethis.https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/avatar-maker/ofknlbikfofijlcjkfcihomkedmchfbn?hl=en
   
   
2. Add signatures in agent profiles
   Signatures are useful for providing branded contact details, links, etc. They add a bit more personalization to your customer service. You can addindividual and branded signaturesand design them very differentlyusing Markdown. I always suggest keeping them short until you don't need to have long ones for some specific reason.
   
   
3. Add your brand name to the Email template
   Default Email template in Zendesk has a footer placeholder like "This email is a service from YourZendeskName". You canremoveit or replace it with your own text like "This email is a service from BRAND X".
   
   
4. Change Help Center address to branded one
   Starting from the Zendesk Support Team plan you canset up a branded Help Center addressinstead of BRAND.zendesk.com/hc. You can use more official support.BRAND.com or more friendly help.BRAND.com as a custom address. And you get a free SSL for this address!
   
   
5. Add SPF and DNS records to verify your branded emails
   This may sound too technical but actually is very easy: just add several records in your domain management system (like GoDaddy). One SPF record (detailshere), 4 CNAME records (detailshere), and one TXT record (detailshere）.You can do it yourself or ask your IT professional. It takes up to 5 minutes.

WORKFLOWS & CHANNELS

1. Use grouping and sorting in Views
   Views are a great tool to organize tickets in your Zendesk, especially when you group the tickets by some attribute and sort them inside this attribute. I usually suggest using Priority for grouping tickets and "Next SLA Breach" attribute to sort them. Look at thisUnassigned tickets viewandits settingsexamples. This way you have a well-prioritized tickets queue reflecting different importance of tickets (= customers) for your business.
   
2. Categorize tickets by topics
   Tickets categorization has a lot of benefits for automating different areas in Zendesk based on topics via triggers: (a) route tickets to groups/agents, (b) assign Priority, (c) assign SLAs, (d) get reporting for customer experience analytics. Organize your topics in forms ormulti-level dropdown fieldsdepending on your Zendesk plan. Downloadthis Excel filewith my 'ultimate' list of categories for E-commerce brands (and instructions about how to create a field).
   
   
3. Use more Priority levels in tickets
   Zendesk allows you to have 2 or 4 levels of ticket priority (you can change them on ticket field settings inAdmin > Tickets Fields > Priority）.Having more levels allows you to reflect all gradients of tickets' importance considering multiple conditions (like category, channel, tags, etc). Otherwise, you have too many just High priority tickets where some are really more urgent than others.
   
   
4. Enable On hold status in tickets
   By default, this status is not enabled in Zendesk. But this status is very useful for many cases when a response is needed from a third party (not the requester or the assignee). You can set up special views to track those tickets and exclude them from other views (using condition Status IS NOT On Hold). Go toAdmin > Tickets Fields > Statusto enable the status.
   
   
5. Set up SLAs to track KPIs and manage the queue
   Sometimes SLAs are not used even if this feature is available because they are considered as an enterprise-like story. In fact, you can use SLAs to have more internal control over tickets queues in terms of prioritization and reporting (remember Views setup in p. 1 above). I usually suggest adding at least 2 metrics – First Reply Time and Next Reply time in Calendar or Business hours. Look atthis screenshotfor a real setup example.
   
   
6. Add Web widget to Help Center / Website
   Web Widget is a great way to receive tickets because unlike emails you have much more control over the submission process and results. You candefine mandatory custom ticket fieldsto collect the required details for further workflows (see p. 2 above). Check other useful亚博电脑端for setting up and customizing Web Widget.
   
   
7. Make Request theme field visible and editable for customers
   This point is one of the actions related to pp. 2 and 5 above. Since you have a clear and simple categorization system you can make it mandatory by ticket submission and get the correct categories in most cases upon ticket creation. It allows you to get all the benefits of tickets categorization from p. 2. Naturally, you benefit even more if your customers use this channel over others (like email or social media) where they don’t have to select a request category.
   
   
8. Use macros in tickets and/or shortcuts in chats (more and more again)
   In my opinion, Macros is the main productivity tool in Zendesk. Macros allow agents to insert predefined responses into the comment box and apply multiple ticket fields values automatically. Sometimes companies avoid using macros to provide more personalized, non-templated customer support and service. For me this attitude is not completely correct: macros just help you to save time for manual typing and field filling. What would be the final reply depends on your agents (who follow your guides and SOPs). Macros are just a tool; people decide to be humans or 'robots'. Check what the normal macros usage rate is below (in the 'KPIs & Reporting' section).
   
   
9. Activate CSAT Surveys if possible
   如果你Zende亚博sk允许您(专业和计划higher) to have CSAT Surveys, use them. They allow you to collect valuable customer feedback (ratings and comments) and track your agents' performance in terms of support quality. And don't forget to activate collecting the bad scores reasons too. Look atthis screenshotwith typical settings. Below (in the 'KPIs & Reporting' section) you will find the details about building a report for CSAT Comments in Explore.
   
   
10. Activate ССs and Followers feature
    ССs and Followers is a pretty new feature (introduced in 2019) and is not actively used yet in old accounts I encounter. Actually, it is very beneficial to separate public and hidden recipients because the Followers feature works like BCC in normal emails. In most cases, you use automatic migration which takes just a few minutes (see howhere）.
    
    
11. Activate Schedules to track KPIs within business hours
    Starting from a Professional plan you canset up schedulesin your Zendesk. Multiple schedules allow you to track groups'/agents' performance reflecting the time zones where they are working (their group/individual schedules). This way you have a more detailed performance picture (within the calendar and business hours).
    
    
12. Activate 'Auto-assign tickets upon solve' setting
    This small setting allows you to automate ticket assignments in one click (you can build a more customized trigger for the same process). Go toAdmin > Tickets > Assignmentsection and check the box (don't forget to save the changes).
    
    
13. Activate the 'Include attachments in emails' setting
    This setting is located on the same page and allows you to include actual attachments in outbound emails instead of links that might be just missed by customers. Go toAdmin > Tickets > Attachmentssection and check the box (don't forget to save the changes).
    
    
14. Activate Automatic Redaction in tickets
    As Zendesk states "Selecting this option enables automatic redaction of credit card numbers from all customer-submitted text in tickets to protect sensitive data.". Go toAdmin > Securityand check the box (don't forget to save the changes).
    
    
15. Activate 'Include unpublished posts' in Facebook page settings
    If you run Facebook ads campaigns you can get them as tickets in Zendesk too (with some limitations describedhere）.Check the setup processhere.
    
    
16. Install apps for online shops, delivery systems, and other integrations
    Zendesk Marketplace has a lot of great free and paid apps. Ecommerce companies might install apps to integrate with online shops (Shopify,WooCommerce,Amazon), delivery systems (Shipstation,Shipup), and other apps.
    
    
    

TRIGGERS & AUTOMATIONS

1. Auto-solve Pending tickets to avoid backlogging
   Very often pending tickets never get a reply from the customer. It makes sense to solve them automatically to avoid tickets backlog growth. You can also include 'Email user' action into this trigger to kindly notify the customer about a pending ticket awaiting the customer's reply. You might build a sophisticated process for this casefollowing Zendesk's Bump Bump Solve tip.
   
   
2. Autoclose Solved tickets
   Since this rule is not mandatory you can use it to keep your tickets queue clean from solved cases that probably will never be reopened again. You can send an educational notification about a closed ticket and ask to provide a new request via the preferred channel. In some cases, this is the main reason to use this rule.
   
   
3. Notify agents/managers about bad CSAT ratings
   Being immediately notified about bad ratings is good not only for customer-obsessed brands. Might customers give you fair bad ratings or from misunderstandings, you have a possibility to follow up and try to solve the initial issue and ask the customer to change the rating to a Good one. Use thisbasic exampleto create a trigger for your needs.
   
   
4. Deactivate duplicate notifications
   By default, Zendesk provides you many triggers that are doing the same thing - notifying you about new or updated tickets. Consider deactivating some of them to reduce clutter in your email box. If you have one or two agents you can deactivate triggers to notify groups and/or all agents. You can reactivate them anytime later once you need those triggers again. Go toAdmin > Triggersand check what you have.
   
   
5. Collect customer reviews following up Good CSAT ratings
   You can easily improve your ratings on different marketplaces if you collect reviews from satisfied customers. In case you use CSAT in Zendesk you can create a trigger sending an email asking to leave a review for your products/services. It should be created in a way similar to the p.3 above, but put another condition for Satisfaction (Good or Good with comment).

KNOWLEDGE BASE (HELP CENTER)

1. Add (more) articles to the 'Promoted articles' section
   With Promoted articles feature you can put some of the articles from your Help Center on the Home page. It should naturally help your customers find them and self-service. Check regularly your Knowledge base views stats usingdefault Reporting(or using Google Analytics with filtering only effective visits) and update this list of Promoted articles accordingly (checkhow to promote an article）.
   
   
2. Make Search box bigger to stimulate self-service
   This task requires some IT skills but is very easy in general. Default search box parameters are pretty fine; nevertheless, I always suggest making it even bigger. Recently I discovered an amazing example of the Help Center byGoSpotcheckwith the search box taking the whole first screen.
   
   
3. Add quick links under the Search box to stimulate self-service
   The same Help Center example I provided above has this option added. In addition to the Promoted articles, this makes the likelihood of self-service even higher. You should place up to Top 5 quick links there (better 3). Less is more here.
   
   
4. Put the Customer Support team on the Main page
   It depends on your privacy policy and guidelines. You can put the collective photo (likeGoSpotcheck) or individual profiles (like KissMyKetohere）.It makes your customer support much friendlier and helps with your assisted service.
   
   
5. Provide multiple Contact options and expectations
   Depending on your customer support strategy (more reactive or proactive) you can put contact options on the Home page. You can manage expectations by adding Operating hours and expected reply time for each support channel (like KissMyKetohere）.

KPIs & REPORTING

1. Check your main Support KPIs against benchmark data
   Zendesk collects and analyzes anonymized data about the customer support performance of thousands of companies around the globe. And this benchmarking data is available for free. Visitthis pagewhen you ask the question "How do we perform compared to the industry average?'.
   
   
2. Install and use Time Tracking app (Professional plan and above)
   Speed is one of the most important dimensions of customer service performance (along with volumes and quality). Time Tracking app allows you to track time spent per each ticket update when the agent directly works with the ticket.Setupis very easy and there are detailed articlesabout building the reporting. Here is areal exampleof the report to track Update Time by Agents.
   
   
3. Check your Views/Tickets rate in Help Center
   Self-service is an important part of any customer support strategy and system. With proper setup, this might save your company a lot of resources for providing excellent personalized assisted support. Having HC Views and Tickets stats (tickets created via Help Center) you can calculate the Views/Tickets rate. It gives you a clear picture of how much self-service you have. A good rate is about 10:1, but it varies for companies depending on the audience's habits and service strategy.
   
   
4. Check your Searches to Tickets rates in Help Center
   It is the same story as in the point above but here we look at Searches/Tickets rate. Since customers can rephrase search requests multiple times and you can have a well-filled Knowledge base this rate may reach 50:1 proportion (recently I have seen that one), but usually it is lower. In simple words, it means that only 1 ticket is submitted when 50 searches are made.
   
   
5. Track articles linking activity by agents
   Placing links to Help Center articles is a good option to promote your Knowledge base and stimulate self-service. Zendesk allows you to track this activity in the defaultExplore dashboard(available on Guide Professional and above) and provides a greatKnowledge Capture appto link articles. Look at leading rates and coach other agents to reach them.
   
   
6. Build CSAT Comments report in Explore to track feedback topics
   With new Explore reporting the old Satisfaction report is removed but you will not find the report with CSAT comments there. This point may be obsolete in the near future, but you can use thisreport exampleto get this in your Explore.
   
   
7. Track macros/shortcuts usage by agents
   This report is essential since macros are an important productivity tool in Zendesk. Zendesk suggests you build the report using tags. It supposes you need to tag all your tickets and build a tags-based report (inExplore）.良好率约为80%,这意味着你使用8macros in 10 tickets on average. And again it varies from company to company. We (at Pythia) provide advanced Macros Reporting in ourMacros Reporting app.
   
   

I hope you enjoyed the checklist and optimized your Zendesk.

And safe and happy support to everyone!

P.S. Check my other tips on Zendesk Community:

• How to set up an "ideal" KPI system for your customer support
• How to organize an excellent tickets categorization in Zendesk
• How to optimise your macros usage in Zendesk
• Showing predefined answers for custom field values in your Help Center webform

Good news!
Now you can easily optimize your Zendesk with an interactive web tool calledZendesk Health Check!

Andrei Kamarouski
Zendesk Expert,PythiaCo-Founder (we build productivity apps for Zendesk)