7 ways to automate Zendesk

Customer service can make or break a brand. You remember the companies that went above and beyond, and you also remember the brands that treated you poorly. But customer support isn't just about being nice. (Though it helps!) Along with soft skills and product knowledge, your customer service processes need to be airtight. You don't want to miss a customer's request just because they emailed the wrong person for help.

Zendesk is a customer service app that lets you customize your ticketing process to suit your business needs. If you already have a ticketing system in place but still have a few holes in your process, Zapier can help plug them up. Through our automatic workflows, which we call Zaps—you can automatically create tickets from form requests, track tickets, and more, so you can take care of customer issues right away.

Table of contents

• Create tickets from a contact form

• Get notifications for new tickets

• Track ticket trends

• Create recurring tickets on a schedule

• Turn emails into tickets

• Use webhooks with Zendesk

• Turn tickets into tasks

Create tickets from a contact form

If a customer needs help with a product, the contact page on the company website is the first place they'll check. Even if you have a separate tab for support requests, some people still default to the first option they see. These Zaps will create Zendesk tickets from new form submissions, so you don't leave a customer hanging.

Get notifications for new tickets

While in-app and email notifications are fine, it's not realistic to think your customer support reps will stay glued to your support app all day—even if that's part of their job. Sometimes they might be working on something else while they're waiting for a customer to respond. Depending on your support volume, you may also want to triage important tickets to specific support specialists or to whoever's on call at that specific time.

These automatic workflows will send a message in your favorite chat app whenever there's a new ticket in a view.

Track ticket trends

You can spot trends in tickets over time. For example, if you launched a new product and receive a surge of tickets, perhaps the new product is a little buggy. Or if you're receiving the same questions constantly, maybe you need to develop some educational content to guide customers along.

Creating a spreadsheet of tickets is a great first step for this kind of data analysis. On certain Zendesk plans, you can export tickets to a JSON, CSV, or XML file. But let's say you only want to extract a specific category of tickets. You'll have a pretty big file to sift through. You can save yourself the headache with these Zaps, which will automatically create a new row when you receive a new ticket in Zendesk.

Create recurring tickets on a schedule

If you assign regular tasks on a set cadence—say to remind a member of your support team to review certain types of tickets or do ongoing maintenance work—speed up that process by automating it. Instead of manually creating a ticket each week or month, use one of these Zaps to create recurring tickets to match your schedule.

Turn emails into tickets

It's inevitable that a customer might reach out for help in the wrong channel. For example, you work in sales, but the client you recently spoke to reaches out to you for help instead of a customer support rep. (That's what you get for being so good at your job!)

Instead of asking your client to send in a support ticket, you can use a Zap to automatically turn that email into a Zendesk ticket. You can avoid giving your client the runaround, and the customer will receive the help they need.

Use webhooks with Zendesk

Zapier connects to thousands of apps, but there may be tools you use that don't have a Zapier integration or niche use cases that aren't supported with that integration's current triggers and actions. In that case, you'll want to use webhooks that push info from your apps to Zendesk.

With this Zap, you can create new Zendesk tickets every time new data is received from a catch hook.

Turn tickets into tasks

Ticketing isn't just a feature used in customer service. People in sales, HR, and other functions use ticketing to handle requests. And why not? It's easy to assign tickets to different people, so if an incoming request requires one colleague's expertise, you can route a ticket to the right place.

If you organize your workday in a task management app, it's not ideal to check in two places in order to plan your work. These automatic workflows will create a task in your favorite project management whenever you receive a new ticket.

Take your customer support to the next level

This is just the start of all that you can do with Zendesk and Zapier. Zapier supports thousands of apps, so you automate almost any task at work. Start building your Zap now and see what you can create.

This article was originally published in October 2020. It was most recently updated in February 2023 to add more ways to automate Zendesk.