Here a list of our top Zendesk gotchas that we've encountered over time, which are easy to avoid, and sure to help improve your Zendesk!
- Tip-Top Agent Access
If you aren't using single sign-in, and you have Zendesk agents coming and going in your Zendesk instance, be sure that you maintain currency on logins. This will ensure that your system continues to be managed securely, and you are freeing up agent licences for your new recruits to utilise.
If you have agents who are temporarily going on-leave, then suspending their account could be an option. See the following article on how to do this: Suspending an agent who no longer works for the company, or who no longer requires access to Zendesk - Working to a Schedule
Zendesk schedules are an important way to automatically manage when you offer your Chat and Talk services. Outside of the working day, whether it is a public holiday or outside business hours, you can control your channel availability automatically.
The other crucial area that schedules come into play are Service Level Agreements (SLAs). If you provide service during business hours, then stop your SLA clocks automatically and restart the next day so that your Service Target reporting remains in tip-top shape. See Creating Schedules with no holidays (Professional & Enterprise) for more information.
Sorry but we are working to a strict schedule here! - The Dreaded Welcome Email
By default, Zendesk Support will send a welcome email to customers whose profile get set-up within the instance. This can happen from a new customer sending in an email, and therefore a profile gets created, or during an import of customer profile data.
The receipt of this welcome email for customers can sometimes drive confusion and frustration, and we normally suggest switching this off unless you want customers to leverage all the goodness that comes with logging into the portal.
This article here guides you through how to Prevent customers receiving a welcome email when their profile is created. - Too many cooks in the kitchen
During our health checks on Zendesk instances, we often find there are many more admins in the account than there should be. Having an admin account allows the user to do anything and everything in Zendesk, including modifying workflow, deleting tickets and changing any of the Zendesk settings for any agent group.
We recommend you maintain only 2-3 admins on any account, and regardless of how many groups are in Zendesk, they remain the gatekeeper for any changes to the instance. Changes within the instance can then be managed under strict change control and testing, keeping Zendesk in control and operating optimally. - Click on the Zendesk URL and Self Serve
It's really nice to see that most Zendesk instances are correctly linked to customer websites. This means that their Help Centers have a URL like help.myBrand.com.au. For others that have not set this up correctly, you can see the URL to be something like myZendeskName.zendesk.com which is not ideal for your brand.
In order to set-up your Zendesk Help Center correctly, you will need to something called "Host Mapping", which uses an alias name (like help.myBrand.com.au) to get customers on the portal.
To set that up correctly, check-out this Zendesk article: Changing the URL of your Help Center. - How good are we?
I know that getting feedback can be a scary thing for all involved, receiving what seems to be harsh criticisms and unnecessary mean-ness from those awful customers! But the reality is that you can't change things that you can't measure and report on. What's more is that much of the feedback received is probably not about a specific individual, but a reflection on a broken process, bad technology or a lack of training.
Measuring Customer Satisfaction is one of the most important things that your business can do, so why not do it? The results can be amazing, allowing your company to report on trends and correlations with FRT, specific enquiry types, product quality issues etc.
One last thing, don't allow your agents to choose who does and doesn't get a satisfaction survey. The results will be amazingly positive if you do, but not the most important results you need to see to improve your business. - Let's Make some noise people!
Zendesk Support makes a lot of email noise in Agent inboxes! By this I mean that the standard Zendesk notifications send out emails to agents when they receive an update on a ticket, get assigned a ticket or a ticket hits the Zendesk group. Agents should be focussed on tickets in the Zendesk portal and not being reactive through email alerts in their inbox. Turn these notifications off and your customer service team will be a lot Zen-er! - Brand like a Pro
It looks professional and improves customer experiences when your agents correspond with clients using nice branding styles and logos. Brand out your trigger notifications, agent signatures, and email templates accordingly and customers will love you for it! - Tous les chemins mènent à Rome
The automated routing of tickets helps with efficiency and avoids the slow-down caused by triage agents manually reviewing contents of an enquiry and assigning them. Speed up your customer service using these Zendesk capabilities, assigning the tickets directly to the person who can resolve them and reduce FRT while increasing Customer Satisfaction and overall loyalty! - Sliding Windows
Views are the most misunderstood feature in Zendesk, which should serve your agents the work at hand easily (not hinder it!). Set-up your views so that agents aren't second guessing what they need to work on next and absolutely give a wide berth to anything that confuses them, or slows down their work.
- You have mail
It's important that your email configuration is set-up perfectly to avoid labelling legitimate enquiries into the suspended or spam ticket buckets. Microsoft also recently rejected a bunch of Zendesk email forwarding rules due to incorrect set-up, so ensure this is all working nicely.
There you have it! Our top tips on how to avoid major gotchas in Zendesk.
But wait, there's more! Contact us now on +61 3 6417 0111 or hello@successcx.com for an initial discussion on how we can assist you in making Zendesk even better!
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