Zendesk - Implementation Planning

Have you registered your Zendesk account but have no idea where to start? Hopefully, this article will provide some guidance on how to plan your implementation.

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Planning:

Planning is key. Before you start configuring your instance, make sure you know exactly what you want the end product to look like, what functionality is needed, and how the workflows will be implemented.

Functionality:

Decide what functionality is needed. Create a checklist indicating all the products or objects that need to be configured. 

  • Channels (how tickets will be created)
    • Email - Identify what email addresses need to create tickets in your instance. Do you have your own email accounts or will you only be using Zendesk support email accounts?
    • Chat - Would you like to utilize live chat? Are you only looking for a simple chat solution (Live Chat add-on) or are you interested in a more comprehensive experience that includes conversational functionality and automated bot messages (Messaging add-on)?
    • Web forms - Do you want customers to submit requests using web forms? How will customers access these forms, will they access your Zendesk help center to submit requests or will you embed the Zendesk widget on your website? Do you require multiple forms, or do some need to be internal only?
    • Form Fields - What fields do you need to have on each form that will allow you to capture the necessary information? Do they need to be customer-facing or internal only? What type of fields do you need? Are they required or optional?
    • Widget - Will you be using the widget and will it be made available on your own website and your help center? What functionality do you want to include in the widget (Display simple contact form or include custom forms? Include messaging or live chat? Include bot functionality and searching of KBAs?)
    • Social media - Will you be allowing social media posts or comments to create tickets? Which platforms do you wish to support?
    • Talk - Will you be implementing voice functionality through Zendesk Talk?
    • Integration - Do you need tickets to be created via the API or other integration methods originating from external systems?
  • Help Center (Guide)
    • Security - who should be able to create tickets? Will your help center be available to everyone or will it require customers or end-users to log in?
    • Knowledge Base - Will you be hosting articles and do they need to be restricted to various user segments (internal users like agents and admins, groups of end-users, signed-in users only, or everyone)?
    • Design - Will you be using the default help center template and just updating the standard branding or do you need to customize the design?
    • Localization - will you be supporting multiple languages?
  • Forum (Gather) - Will you be using the Zendesk Gather platform to implement a community forum?
  • Brands - will you require multiple brands?
  • Custom user or organization fields - do you need any custom fields to be included in any of these objects?

Workflow design:

Design your required workflow. This is best done using a workflow design tool. Conduct brainstorming sessions to map the required workflow:

  • How are your agents grouped? Determine what groups need to be created. Tickets will be assigned to groups based on a set of criteria.
  • What are your business hours?
  • Who and how are tickets submitted?
  • How are tickets categorized or classified? Do you have multiple forms or a field that provides a selection to the submitter that would indicate what the ticket request type or category is?
  • How will tickets be routed? Which group should tickets be routed to based on what conditions (request type, channel, customer, form, etc.)
  • What actions do agents need to take when updating tickets? Are there fields and tags that need to be updated? Do you have predefined or canned responses that you would like to create macros for?
  • When, how, and to who are tickets escalated or re-assigned?
  • Do you want to automatically send customer satisfaction surveys after tickets have been solved? 
  • How long after a ticket is solved do you want to automatically close it?
  • Do you want to automate reminders to customers who have pending tickets that agents are waiting on responses, and automatically solve them if no response is received within the desired time?
  • How will agents know which tickets they need to work on? Do you need custom views to filter the list of tickets by a set of conditions (status, customer, skill, group, etc.)?
  • Will you be utilizing service-level agreements to help agents prioritize the tickets they need to focus on?

Team members:

Team members include all your staff that will be performing various functions within Zendesk.

  • Determine how agents will be grouped, will it be by department, function, or skill?
  • Will agents belong to multiple groups?
  • Do you need custom permissions for certain types of staff members (access to edit and publish articles, access, and edit reports, limited view of tickets, etc.)
  • Who will be your administrators?

Implementation

Project plan and timeline:

Compile a project plan with a task list indicating deliverables and indicate who is responsible for each task, when it must be started and completed, and if it has any dependencies.

It is important to understand and indicate what the correct sequence is. Below is a proposed sequence list indicating which objects need to be configured in what order:

  • Configure the account and general settings:
    • Admin Center -> Account:
      • Security
      • Brand management
      • Appearance
  •  Configure team members and groups
    • Admin Center - > People:
      • Team -> Groups (actual agents can be added at a later stage but you might want to add some team members initially to allow for testing of workflows)
      • Configuration:
        • User fields - custom fields to store information in user profiles
        • Organization fields - custom fields to store information related to organizations 
        • End users - review all the end-user configuration options (who can submit tickets, do users have to register etc.)
  • Configure ticket settings, forms, and fields
    • Admin Center -> Objects and rules:
      • Tickets -> Fields (create all the custom fields needed)
      • Tickets -> Forms (create the required forms and add/remove fields)
      • Tickets -> Settings (review ticket settings: default comment type, side conversations etc.)
      • Business rules -> Schedules (add business hour schedule)
  • Configure Channels
    • Admin Center -> Channels:
      • Email - add required support addresses but do not turn on forwarding until you are ready to go live.
      • Messaging
      • Talk
      • Social media
  • Configure workflows
    • Admin Center -> Objects and rules:
      • Business rules -> Triggers: configure the routing of tickets to specific groups based on a set of criteria. Create triggers to set the default priority and schedule new tickets. Create other triggers as required by the workflow. Make sure the triggers are in the correct order. Review this KBA for more information on triggers.
      • Business rules -> Automations: configure required automation to send reminders and auto-update tickets.
    • Admin Center -> Apps and integrations
      • Apps: install and configure apps from the Zendesk marketplace
      • Integrations: configure out-of-the-box integrations with Shopify, Salesforce etc.
      • Webhooks: configure webhooks to connect to other APIs.
      • APIs: configure API access to allow other application access to your Zendesk instance.

Testing and training

Ensure thorough testing is performed. Plan testing by providing test scripts to testers. This is a great time to introduce agents to your new Zendesk instance.

Zendesk provides free online training for agents and administrators. Have a look at the available courses and have your agents and administrators complete the necessary training before go-live, Zendesk training can be found here.

Additional custom training will be needed to train your agents on your workflow procedures.

Go-live

Perform the following actions when you are ready to go live.

  • Turn on email forwarding
  • Activate other channels like social media, text, etc.
  • Forward calls to your new Talk number or port numbers to Talk.
  • Activate your help center.
  • Update links on your website that point to your help center or support email addresses (phone numbers).
  • Deploy the web widget code on your website.