Mastering Zendesk

Mastering Zendesk

by Cedric F. Jacob
Released January 2017
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781786461049

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Book description

Master the art of providing effective IT services to your customers by leveraging Zendesk

About This Book

  • Deep dive into the functionalities of Zendesk and improve your organization's customer services
  • Learn how to expand the capabilities of Zendesk by integrating and extending it with third-party tools
  • A master level guide that manages tickets, channels, and workflows along with advanced security features

Who This Book Is For

This book is for proficient Zendesk administrators who want to unlock the full potential of their Zendesk environment by gaining a deeper understanding of Zendesk's advanced customization options.

What You Will Learn

  • Customize ticket channels such as Email, Twitter, Facebook, and Web-Widget
  • Add business rules to create a more effective and automated Zendesk environment
  • Use Zendesk apps to add more functionality to the Zendesk setup
  • Extend Zendesk with JIRA and Salesforce
  • Create custom metrics within GoodData in order to set up customized and automated reports
  • Learn how to secure and troubleshoot Zendesk

In Detail

Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service solution that is widely used because it is easy, efficienct, flexible, and low cost. It is highly scalable and is great for organizations of all sizes. If you're a Zendesk administrator and are looking to explore advanced-level concepts, then this book is for you.

It covers the core functionalities such as managing users, groups, and the organization, and creating and adding custom fields. You will learn how to add customized ticket channels to your account. Then, you will focus on customizing business rules and extending Zendesk with JIRA and Salesforce. Towards the end, the book emphasizes security and troubleshooting aspects as well as providing tips and tricks to create a more efficient support environment.

By the end of this book, you will be able to turn a basic Zendesk setup into a highly customized working environment.

Style and approach

This advanced guide provides easy to understand examples to ensure you gain expertise with Zendesk.

Table of contents

  1. Mastering Zendesk
    1. Mastering Zendesk
    2. Credits
    3. About the Author
    4. About the Reviewer
    5. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Why subscribe?
    6. Customer Feedback
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code
        2. Downloading the color images of this book
        3. Errata
        4. Piracy
        5. Questions
    8. 1. Configuring Your Own Zendesk
      1. The Zendesk environment
      2. The basic Zendesk setup
        1. Channels
        2. Self-service
        3. Apps and integrations
        4. Ticketing workflows and efficiency
          1. Triggers and automations
          2. Views
          3. Macros
          4. Service Level Agreements
          5. Groups
          6. Organizations
        5. Performance reporting
        6. Localization and branding
      3. Evaluating individual requirements
        1. Our example company
        2. Desired setup
          1. The initial contact/channels
            1. Email
            2. Twitter
            3. Facebook
            4. Widget
            5. Help Center / Support Form
          2. The ticket's journey
            1. Ticket views
            2. Agent workflow
        3. Zendesk setup
          1. Asking questions
          2. Listing tasks
        4. Creating the road map
      4. Summary
    9. 2. Agent Roles, Groups, Organizations, and User Tags
      1. Users/agents
        1. Custom agent roles
          1. Ticket permissions
          2. People permissions
          3. Help Center permissions
          4. Tools permissions
          5. Channels permissions
          6. System permissions
          7. Custom roles for our example
      2. Groups
      3. Organizations
        1. Tags
        2. Domains
        3. Group
        4. Users
        5. Details
        6. Notes
        7. Organizations for our example
      4. User tags
      5. Importing existing user databases
      6. Summary
    10. 3. Creating Custom Fields
      1. What are fields in Zendesk?
        1. Standard ticket fields
          1. Requester
          2. Assignee
          3. CCs
          4. Share
          5. Subject
          6. Description
          7. Status
          8. Type
          9. Priority
          10. Tags
        2. Standard user and organization fields
        3. Different types of fields
          1. Drop-down list
          2. Text
          3. Multi-line text
          4. Numeric
          5. Decimal
          6. Checkbox
          7. Date
          8. Regular Expression
      2. Creating custom fields
        1. Custom user  fields
        2. Custom ticket fields
        3. Custom organization fields
      3. Summary
    11. 4. Setting Up Multiple Ticket Channels
      1. What are channels?
        1. Email channel
        2. Facebook channel
        3. Twitter channel
        4. Chat (Zopim) channel
        5. Talk channel
        6. Web Widget channel
        7. Mobile SDK channel
        8. API channel
      2. Setting up Zendesk channels
        1. Email channel setup
          1. Adding internal e-mail addresses
          2. Forwarding example with Outlook.com
          3. Create SPF record
          4. Email channel settings
            1. Accept wildcard emails
            2. Personalized email replies
            3. Gmail Go-to Actions
            4. Email templates
            5. Mail delimiter
            6. Custom domain for DKIM
        2. Facebook channel setup
          1. Adding your first Facebook page
          2. Facebook channel settings
        3. Twitter channel setup
          1. Adding your first Twitter account
          2. Twitter channel settings
            1. Account-related settings
            2. General settings
            3. Manage searches
        4. Widget channel setup
          1. About Zendesk's widget
          2. Widget customization
          3. Widget snippet code
        5. Help Centre (Support Form) channel setup
          1. Zendesk's Help Centre– A quick overview
          2. The support form
      3. Summary
    12. 5. Customizing Business Rules and Ticket Escalation
      1. What are Business Rules?
      2. Triggers versus automations
      3. Triggers in detail
        1. Default triggers
          1. Notify requester of received request
          2. Notify requester of comment update
          3. Notify assignee of comment update
          4. Notify assignee of assignment
          5. Notify assignee of reopened ticket
          6. Notify group of assignment
          7. Notify all agents of received request
          8. Default trigger conclusion
        2. Conditions
          1. Ticket-related conditions
            1. Ticket: Status
            2. Ticket: Type
            3. Ticket: Priority
            4. Ticket: Group
            5. Ticket: Assignee
            6. Ticket: Requester
            7. Ticket: Organization
            8. Ticket: Tags
            9. Ticket: Channel
            10. Ticket: Update via
            11. Ticket: Received at
            12. Ticket: Satisfaction
            13. Ticket: Is...
            14. Ticket: Comment is...
            15. Ticket: Comment text...
            16. Ticket: Reopens
            17. Ticket: Agent replies
            18. Ticket: Custom Fields
          2. Requester related conditions
            1. Requester: Language
            2. Requester: Role
            3. Requester: Time zone
            4. Requester: Custom Fields
          3. Other Conditions
            1. Other: Current user
            2. Organization: Custom Fields
        3. Actions
          1. Ticket-related actions
            1. Ticket: Status
            2. Ticket: Priority
            3. Ticket: Type
            4. Ticket: Group
            5. Ticket: Assignee
            6. Ticket: Satisfaction
            7. Ticket: Set tags
            8. Ticket: Add tags
            9. Ticket: Remove tags
            10. Ticket: Add CC
            11. Ticket: Custom Fields
          2. Requester- and organization-related actions
            1. Requester: Language
            2. Requester: Custom fields
            3. Organization: Custom fields
          3. Other actions
            1. Notifications: Email user
            2. Notifications: Email group
          4. Creating custom triggers
          5. Additional tips
            1. Naming and organizing triggers
            2. Testing triggers
      4. Automations in detail
        1. Default automations
          1. Close ticket 4 days after status is set to solved
          2. Request customer satisfaction rating
        2. Automation-specific conditions
        3. Creating custom automations
      5. Custom ticket views
      6. Service Level Agreements
      7. Summary
    13. 6. Integrating and Extending Zendesk
      1. Zendesk apps
        1. Zendesk Marketplace
          1. Zendesk Labs
          2. Channels
        2. Zendesk app locations
        3. Zendesk App examples
          1. Show Related Tickets app
          2. Iframe app
          3. Out of Office app
        4. Creating custom Zendesk apps
          1. Planning a custom app
          2. Installing the necessary tools
            1. Installing Ruby
            2. Installing Ruby in Windows
            3. Installing Ruby in Mac
            4. Installing the ZAT gem
        5. Creating app files
        6. Previewing our app
        7. Coding our app
        8. Uploading/installing our app
      2. JIRA integration
        1. Integration preparations
        2. Installing the integration
          1. JIRA server specifics
      3. Salesforce integration
        1. Integration requirements
        2. Installing the integration
          1. Viewing Salesforce data in Zendesk
          2. Adding more features
      4. Summary
    14. 7. Advanced Reporting and Insights via GoodData
      1. Reports in Zendesk
        1. Creating and exporting reports in Zendesk
      2. The Zendesk's reporting overview
        1. Overview
        2. Leaderboard
        3. Knowledge Base
        4. Community
        5. Search
        6. Net Promoter Score
        7. Satisfaction
        8. Insights
      3. Zendesk Insights/GoodData
        1. Creating a Dashboard and Tab
          1. Adding reports
          2. Adding filters
          3. Adding Widgets
          4. Adding some text and lines
        2. Creating custom reports
        3. Creating custom metrics
        4. Schedule dashboard E-mails
      4. Summary
    15. 8. Security Settings and SSO
      1. Security settings and best practice
        1. Access security
          1. Zendesk password authentication
            1. Two-factor authentication
          2. Zendesk's single sign-on options 
            1. Social media SSO
            2. Enterprise SSO
            3. Secure Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
          3. IP restrictions
        2. Using custom roles to reduce unnecessary access
        3. Auditing your Zendesk account
        4. Secure coding practices
        5. Removing/Redacting Credit Card numbers
        6. Private attachments
        7. Advanced Security Enterprise Add-on
          1. Data at rest encryption
          2. Enhanced disaster recovery
          3. HIPAA compliance
      2. In case of a breach
      3. Summary
    16. 9. Troubleshooting Zendesk
      1. Troubleshooting performance issues
        1. Zendesk status
        2. General browser issues
          1. Disabling extensions/plugins
          2. Clearing browsing data/cache
        3. Traceroute
      2. Troubleshooting business rules
        1. Triggers and automations
          1. Ticket events
          2. Trigger order
        2. SLAs
      3. Troubleshooting Zendesk apps
      4. Contacting Zendesk support
      5. Summary
    17. 10. Zendesk Tips and Tricks
      1. Business rules
        1. Notifying the team leader about a ticket with a high amount of replies
        2. Using tags to disable or enable business rules for tickets
          1. Closing a ticket via a tag
          2. Disabling the satisfaction survey via a tag
        3. Removing tags from follow-up tickets
        4. Using business rules to detect and fix user errors
        5. Adding comments to tickets via a URL target
        6. Logging ticket events via an e-mail target
      2. Roles and views
        1. Creating a vacation view
        2. Creating a history view
        3. Creating limited custom roles for new staff members
      3. Reporting
        1. Report tags and folders in GoodData
        2. Duplicating reports in GoodData
        3. Excluding specific tickets from your GoodData reports
        4. Sending agent-specific reports using variables
      4. Zendesk apps
        1. Custom tagging app
        2. Custom ticket merge app
        3. Custom macro statistics app
        4. Custom Zendesk backup app
        5. Zendesk CSS hack in apps
      5. Summary

Product information

  • Title: Mastering Zendesk
  • Author(s): Cedric F. Jacob
  • Release date: January 2017
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781786461049