Practical Zendesk Administration, 2nd Edition

Preface

In 2011, a survey was conducted to find out what people really value about the companies and brands they use. It may surprise you to know that when choosing among product quality, price, or customer service, 55% of people selected customer service as the most important factor in determining whether they would recommend a company.

The example I often give is this: imagine your friend has bought a pen. Now imagine you want to buy a pen for yourself, and you ask your friend whether she likes the pen she purchased. Statistically speaking, your friend is unlikely to say, “it’s a good pen because it writes really well.” She also won’t say, “I like this pen because I got it for a good price” or “I like it because it doesn’t smudge.” No, statistically speaking, your friend is most likely to say, “I like this pen because, on the day it ran out of ink and I called the pen company, the customer service rep made me feel really good about owning this pen.”

That is the sort of relationship Zendesk helps you achieve with your customers. For more details on this statistic, see the “Why Companies Should Invest in the Customer Experience” infographic.

The best way to describe this book is “the Zendesk consultant in book form.” The advice, best practices, and pitfalls included in this book are the result of working in the trenches, launching Zendesk customer implementations, delivering training sessions, and answering literally thousands of questions from training participants in countries all over the world. Every question from a Zendesk training participant gives me a fresh perspective on new ways to use the product, which I’ve tried to capture and share in this book.

Zendesk is a popular customer service software tool, and its approach has always been to deliver a powerful solution with beautifully simple design. However, Zendesk’s simple design philosophy should not lead you to believe that the product is not powerful. In fact, the entire purpose of this book is to bring the expansive set of Zendesk features to light, explain their purpose, demystify the best approach to use them, and help you to get the most out of the product.

In explaining the features of the Zendesk product, we’ve focused on best practices instead of the step-by-step configuration tasks carried out by an administrator. If you are completely new to Zendesk and you find that you’re having trouble understanding some of the concepts in this book, we recommend taking a look at the official Zendesk user guide before diving further into this book. This will ensure that you have a solid understanding of the features before getting the advice on best practices contained in this book. It may also help to build a strong foundation for the process of making important decisions about your Zendesk instance.

It’s also worth noting that this book focuses specifically on best practices for the Zendesk product without going into depth on the broader techniques for providing outstanding customer service. Zendesk is a tool that can be wielded in any way that works best for your organization.

In his book High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service (AMACOM, 2012), Micah Solomon describes the idea of “touching” customers as the starting point to developing a lasting relationship. It’s impossible to physically touch customers over the Internet, but it’s possible to use Zendesk to reach out to those customers and deliver that metaphorical touch. This book will get you to the point of using the tool to its full potential—all that’s left is for you to use it. As Micah Solomon says, “the goal in all this is to touch customers in a way that builds true customer loyalty.”

—Stafford Vaughan

Chapter Overviews

Chapter 1, Introduction to Zendesk

Before diving into the Zendesk product itself, this chapter explains the most important concepts of the tool. By the end of this chapter, you’ll understand many of the terms used in the product and the benefits of implementing Zendesk as your customer service solution.

Chapter 2, Initial Setup

There is a small set of tasks that all Zendesk administrators should perform on their instances before allowing users to sign in. This chapter explains these initial setup tasks and focuses on the steps necessary to give your Zendesk environment the same branding as the rest of your organization. It also provides details on setting up your Zendesk instance for an international audience.

Chapter 3, Security

Any website that captures personal information must be secure, and this chapter will help you to make decisions on the various security options in Zendesk.

Chapter 4, User Management

This chapter explains the various types of users that can be created (end users, agents, and administrators) and the roles of each one, as well as the different permissions you can configure for them.

Chapter 5, Channels

Zendesk is a tool that leverages many different methods of creating tickets, from common systems such as email to the newer approach of using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This chapter explains each of these channels, how to set them up, the benefits of each one, and how to make the most of them.

Chapter 6, Fields and Data Capture

Out of the box, Zendesk has a number of default fields that capture the standard information required by any customer service team. As an administrator, you have some control over these fields, as well as the ability to add new fields to your Zendesk instance.

Chapter 7, Agent Support Process

Making a support agent’s life easier is a good idea for everyone involved. This chapter explains some of the techniques you can use to make the support process more efficient, as well as the best ways to manage the decisions that agents make on a daily basis.

Chapter 8, Automated Business Rules

Automating your business process in Zendesk will not only save your team time, it will also reduce the risk of mistakes. This chapter describes the various Zendesk features—including triggers and automations—you can use to achieve this. It also provides examples of common business processes and their associated business rules, which gives you an inside look into how other customer service teams operate.

Chapter 9, Help Center

The Zendesk Help Center allows you to provide self-service support to your customers. This chapter explains how to set up your Help Center and customize it to reflect your company’s or organization’s brand. This chapter also includes information on how to measure the use of your Help Center and constantly improve it.

Zendesk Version

The version of Zendesk covered in this book is the latest public release as of March 2014. Zendesk has a frequent—often weekly—release schedule, with new features and updates to existing features. The release notes are made available to the public in the official Release Notes forum. Throughout this book we’ve deliberately described features without giving detailed steps to configure them, and we’ve included screenshots only in situations when we believe that the explanation would not be complete without them. The purpose of this book is to focus on the advice and best practices for administering the product, rather than be a step-by-step guide. If you would like or need more detailed instructions, the official Zendesk user guides may be a useful accompaniment to this book.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Tip

This element signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.

Warning

This element indicates a warning or caution.

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Content Updates

This update to Practical Zendesk Administration brings all of the content up to date with the version of Zendesk that is available as of March 2014. The many user interface and workflow enhancements and new features added since the first version of the book was published have been added. The biggest change is that the new version of the Zendesk customer-facing support portal, Help Center, has replaced the older version, Web Portal, which was included in the first version of the book but is no longer available to new Zendesk customers. Many of the sections of the book have been updated as a result and a new chapter on Help Center replaced the previous Web Portal chapter, which was called “Forums”. The other new Zendesk features that were added include the following:

• New security features:

  • Digitally Signed Outbound Email Communication
  • Administrative Audit Log
  • Agent Device Management
• Customer Lists
• Multiple Organizations
• Support Email Addresses
• On-hold Ticket Status
• Custom User and Organization Fields
• Ticket Forms
• Markdown and Emoji support in ticket comments