Integrating Zendesk with SalesIQ

Integrating Zendesk with SalesIQ


What is Zendesk?

 Zendesk is a customer ticketing system that allows companies a method of tracking and responding to customer service requests.

Together Zendesk and Zoho SalesIQ deliver a complete view of all your support interactions logged in one, organized database. Working together they deliver the added ability to connect, chat, engage and support in real-time within the context of their existing support relationship. Your customer supporting operation is built upon the strong foundation Zendesk establishes and strengthened with Zoho SalesIQ's ability to leverage the power of your customer data into superb support in real-time. 

How to integrate Zendesk account with SalesIQ?

Before you start exploring, you need to link your Zoho SalesIQ with your Zendesk account. If you don’t have a Zoho SalesIQ account yet, you can learn how to create a new Zoho SalesIQ here.

Note:
  1. To use Zoho SalesIQ integrated with Zendesk, you will have to be a customer of the Enterprise/Professional/Basic plans of Zoho SalesIQ and have a Zendesk account. You can also try this feature during your 14 days free trial. 
  2. If you have active accounts for both Zendesk and Zoho SalesIQ (in the Professional/Enterprise/Basic Edition), you can continue with the instructions below to link up your Zoho SalesIQ to your Support account.

Connecting your Zoho SalesIQ account to a Zendesk account

Before we can start exploring how the Zendesk integration with Zoho SalesIQ can improve your entire customer-support operation, we need to set up Zoho SalesIQ to work together with your customer Desk database inside Zendesk.
 
To make things as simple as possible for you, we recommend having a current administrator for the Zendesk account you are linking to your Zoho SalesIQ turn on the integration inside Zoho SalesIQ. With access to your Zoho SalesIQ, a Zendesk administrator can follow the steps below to implement the integration.

  1. Login to Zoho SalesIQ.
  2. Navigate to Settings > Developers > Integrations and click Zendesk.
  3. Then, click the Enable button.

  1. You will be directed to the Zendesk login page, enter the Zendesk Username and Password, click Login.  
  2. This will automatically link up the Zoho SalesIQ account to the Zoho Desk account. All the privileges, access and permissions you hold in your Desk account will be replicated in the SalesIQ account as well.
  3. To change the Zendesk account details that your Zoho SalesIQ is linked to (as the admin of the desired Zendesk account), click "Change" button.

  1. Enter the new Sub-domain/Company Name in the text box and click "Enable Zendesk Integration."

  1. Enter your new Login credentials and click "Sign in."


How to enable/disable Zendesk integration?

If necessary or desired, you can disable your Zoho SalesIQ’s integration with a Zendesk account at any time.

To disable integration with Zendesk:

  1. In Zoho SalesIQ, navigate to Settings > Developers > Integrations and click Zendesk.
  2. The Zendesk integrations page appears, click the Disable button on the top right corner of the page.


To enable integration with Zendesk:

 You can easily re-enable the integration with the same settings:
  1. Navigate to Settings > Developers > Integrations and click Zendesk.
  2. Then, click the Enable button. 


Zendesk integration Configurations

Now that your Zoho SalesIQ is hooked up to your Zendesk account, it is time to configure the integration to best fit your team’s specific needs. Read below to explore the options you have for configuring the integration.

 Choose SalesIQ Chats to Automatically Create Requests in Zendesk

The first configuration you can make is deciding which chats from Zoho SalesIQ you want to be automatically created as requests inside Zendesk. You can choose either All Chats, Operator Attended Chats, Missed Chats, or None. Whichever you choose, the system will create requests inside Zendesk for all chats that fit your defined configuration.

To configure visitors chats as automated requests inside Zendesk
  1. In Zoho SalesIQ, navigate to Settings > Developers > Integrations and click Zendesk.
  2. The Zendesk integrations page appears. In the Zendesk Configurations section, select the type of chat which you would like to automate in the Zendesk configuration sub-section - All Chats, Operator Attended Chats, Missed Chats, or None
    1. All Chats– Converts all the visitors chats into Zendesk request.
    2. Operator Attended Chats– Converts only those chats attended in Zoho SalesIQ to Zendesk requests.
    3. Missed Chats – Converts only missed chats to requests.
    4. None – Converts no chats into Zendesk requests. But, your agents can manually convert chats to Zendesk requests based on their personal judgement.


Setting Status for the Automated Zendesk Requests

Choose the status of Zendesk requests created from an attended chat in Zoho SalesIQ (Open/Pending). For those requests created for chats missed in Zoho SalesIQ, the system will create a Zendesk request with an Open status.



 Sync Zendesk Knowledgebase to SalesIQ's Article section

If you have a maintained Zendesk Knowledgebase, you can now sync it with SalesIQ's Articles section. You do not have to create your Zendesk articles again in SalesIQ to make it visible in the chat window. You can simply sync the Zendesk Knowledge base to SalesIQ's articles section.

To sync articles from Zendesk to SalesIQ:

  1. Navigate to Settings > Developers > Integrations.
  2. In the Zendesk Configurations section, enable the Sync Zendesk and SalesIQ articles toggle button.
  3. A list of the departments inside SalesIQ will be listed. Choose the Zendesk's article categories that you want to map to each department in SalesIQ.

  1. Choose a time frame after which the articles have to be synced automatically. This can either be: Daily, Weekly or Monthly.


Note:
You can map a Zendesk category to only one SalesIQ department but you can map a department with multiple article categories.
If the articles sync frequency is set to:
  1. Daily - Sync will take place in the early morning hours of every day
  2. Weekly - Sync will take place on the same day of the week on which you had synced the articles first. (For example, if you had synced the articles on Monday, the articles will be synced on Monday of every week)
  3. Monthly - Sync will take place on the same day of the month on which you had synced the articles first. (For example, if you had synced the articles on the 1st of January, the articles will be synced on the 1st of every month).
  4. Sync now - The articles will sync in sometime. Once the articles are synced, you will receive an email from SalesIQ as shown below.


  1. You can view all the synced articles inside Templates > Articles.
  2. The articles that are synced from Zendesk will be saved as drafts and have to be published from the Articles section. 
  3. The articles will have a distinct tag "Synced from Zendesk", which will reflect after they had been synced from Zendesk.
  4. Select the synced article that has to be published, click Publish.
Note:
  1. Make sure that your Zendesk articles are published to sync with the SalesIQ's Articles section.
  2. You can preview the articles inside SalesIQ but it cannot be edited until the integration is disabled. Once disabled, the Zendesk articles will be treated as SalesIQ articles.
  3. These articles can be synced only by the administrators.
  4. If you are not able to view the articles in the chat window, it might be because the articles are not synced properly / it is not published in Zendesk Knowledgebase / the integration is disabled.
  5. When sync is turned off, article syncing stops but the existing articles remain unchanged.
  6. The articles will be synced at early hours in the morning once the frequencies are set (Daily, Weekly or Monthly). In case you edit the articles inside Zendesk, you need to click Sync Now for the changes to immediately reflect inside SalesIQ. Otherwise the changes will be reflected only during the sync cycle that you have set.
  7. When the Zendesk article has to be synced, make sure that the display permission for the article in your Zendesk account i.e., "Visible to" field must be set to "Everyone" in order to view the article in SalesIQ.
  8. The name of the article category in the chat window will be visible only if you have created the same category name in Zendesk, i.e., the section name of the Zendesk article will not be taken as the article category in the chat window.
  9. The Zendesk articles with formatted text like bold, italics, etc will not be reflected with the format while it is synced in the SalesIQ's Article section. You can only link to other pages, add an image/video, and insert tables.

Mapping SalesIQ Departments with Zendesk

You can also configure your departments in both Zendesk and Zoho SalesIQ to ensure the right Zendesk agents are connecting and chatting with the right customers--and ensuring requests from Zoho SalesIQ are being logged to the right department inside Zendesk.

Under the Zoho SalesIQ - Zendesk Group Mapping section the Zendesk integration settings page, you will see your existing Zoho SalesIQ departments. Each department will be listed on the left edge, with a drop-down menu on the right where you can configure which Zendesk department you wish to pair this Zoho SalesIQ department with. You can also configure a department to have no integration, be read-only, or give your agents the ability to choose the intended Zendesk department on demand.



The Department Linking Settings

As mentioned, if you don't pair a Zoho SalesIQ department with a specific Zendesk department you can choose one of three general settings: No Integration, Read only and Choose on demand. These predefined settings give you added flexibility to decide where to create or send Zoho SalesIQ chats inside Zendesk. These predefined settings can be chosen for all the departments in your Zoho SalesIQ.

No Integration
If you choose the No Integration setting for a particular Zoho SalesIQ department, you cannot create or view any Zendesk requests while conducting chats in that department, and no requests will be automatically created from chats in that Zoho SalesIQ Department. These departments become effectively disintegrated with your Zendesk account. If you have a Zoho SalesIQ department that doesn't handle customer desk issues, this setting works great as you won't overpopulate your Zendesk database with non-Desk related chats.

Read Only
If you configure a department to the "Read Only" setting, your agents can view the existing Zendesk requests from that customer's account, but they cannot create new Zendesk tickets, or edit the status of existing tickets.

Choose on Demand
By selecting the "Choose on Demand" setting for a department, your agents can view existing tickets and convert chats from this department in Zoho SalesIQ to a request in Zendesk for whichever department it needs to be in.

When chatting with a customer in a Zoho SalesIQ department configured this way, the agent will see a button to the right of the chat window in the visitor information sidebar. By clicking this button, Convert Chat as request," the agent will be able to choose the priority, status, classification and department of the request he is creating inside Zendesk. You can learn more about the configurations an agent can choose on demand below.
  1.  Priority– An agent can set the priority for the request as Urgent, High, Normal or Low based on the chat with the customer and their specific needs.
  2.  Status– The agent can also choose the status of the request to be created, with the choices being: Open, Pending and Solved.
  3.  Classification– Zendesk agents can classify the chats as a Problems, Incident, Question and Task depending on how your classifications are configured inside the Zendesk account your Zoho SalesIQ is linked to.
  4.  Department– Lastly, the agent can direct the request to specific department inside Zendesk, to ensure the request he is creating from Zoho SalesIQ ends up where it needs to be inside your help desk.

Department Intelligence

Upon integration, the system will check to see if your Zendesk account and Zoho SalesIQ have matching department names. If there are matches, your Zoho SalesIQ will automatically route those departments together as your default department based configurations. Regardless of how many matches you have, be it one department or 20, your Zoho SalesIQ will automatically route those departments together by default.




 Adding a new Department In Zoho SalesIQ and Integrating with Zendesk

  1. You can add departments to Zoho SalesIQ at any time and Zoho SalesIQ will automatically map the department to a matching Zendesk department. If you create a new Zoho SalesIQ department and their is no matching department in your Zendesk account, the system will by default configure this Zoho SalesIQ department to "On Demand."
  2. When your Zoho SalesIQ automatically integrates a new department with a mathcing department in Zendesk, you will see this message: 'Auto association triggered! Zoho SalesIQ finds a match in the integrated Zendesk. Hence it associates automatically. To de-link click here'
  3. Click “De- Link” to undo the auto-associated match, and configure the Zoho SalesIQ department to "Choose on demand".

Zendesk Request to be Displayed in Zoho SalesIQ

You can filter the “Recent Zendesk requests” and the “search results” from Zendesk, or you can fetch from all the Zendesk departments. You will get two options here.
  1. All Departments – This will show the recent requests, search results from all departments of Zendesk in your agent Operator console.
  2. Mapped Departments – This will show the recent requests and search results only from the mapped Zendesk department.



Note : For Read-Only and Choose on Demand departments, the recent request/search will display the support requests from all the departments.

Merging Zendesk Requests

When a customer starts a chat with you and it becomes clear they are asking for the same thing as they have in an existing request, you have the ability to merge the new request with the existing, you can also associate the chat with the existing one.

Associate Chat

While chatting, you can click on any of the customer's existing requests on the right-hand sidebar. A click on the existing request will display the information about the request, along with a chat transcript if it was from a past chat. Below this you will see a button, Associate Chat that you can click to associate your current chat with that existing request, effectively merging the two requests.

Merging Tickets

  1. If the visitor chat is auto-converted or if you have converted as ticket already, and finds the same ticket request on the Recent Tickets from the Visitor section. Then, you can click on the Merge with the Exisiting Ticket button from the recently converted ticket and merge with the existing ticket.
  2. You can find the comment section enabled before merging the tickets. You can go with the same content provided in the comment box, or change as you wish and click on the Confirm and Merge button.
  3. You can find the tickets merged and displayed in the Ticket Conversations section.

Using the Integrated Information

When you know how to use the instantly available information from Zendesk, you get the most value from your integrating live chat support with your existing customer support database.

How to View the Recent Chat Transcript of a Visitor? 

When an agent receives a chat from a visitor the recent requests inside Zendesk from that visitor will be displayed below the visitor info on the right sidebar. By clicking a request an agent can view more information about the request, including a complete chat transcript if there is one.

Quick, Direct Access to Zendesk 

If your Zoho SalesIQ agent also has access to the Zendesk account, a simple click on the "Read More" icon in the recent request, and they will automatically get a complete view of that specific request inside Zendesk. With instant access to a past, or related requests, your agents can quickly get a better view of how they can help the customer they are currently chatting with.

Searching Zendesk Tickets

While chatting with, your agents can also search for tickets from Zendesk by visitor name, ticket number, a visitors email address, or even by a requests subject.
To search for requests, click on the magnifying glass on the right side of "Request Related to this Chat." This will take you to the search panel where you can enter the term you wish to look up.

Changing Request Status

Also while chatting, your agents can open or close related Zendesk requests from Zoho SalesIQ. Lets say you are chatting with a customer and learn from chatting that his password has not actually been reset. So instead of creating another request, you can re-open the associated request you see in the sidebar and ensure the task gets taken care of without the mess of redundant requests.



Visitor Info Pushed from Zoho SalesIQ to Zendesk

When the visitor chat is coverted as Support ticket, the important information that is available in Zoho SalesIQ is automatically pushed to Zendesk. You can find the Visitor Information in the Internal section of your Zendesk account. This info helps your support executive who do not have access to the Zoho SalesIQ to know the important details about the visitor. 



The Zoho SalesIQ chat transcript will be available under the "Public" section of the Zendesk. The chat transcript will be pushed to the Zendesk immediately after the conversation gets over in Zoho SalesIQ (If converted as ticket).



The Name, Email address and Phone number of the visitor will be displayed in Zendesk.



Adding Tags to the Zendesk Ticket from Zoho SalesIQ

  1. Tags can be added to users and organizations and these tags can then be used in business rules to manage the ticket workflow. Tagging users and organizations provides you with a way to add more data about each and then act on that data. For example, you can tag an organization or a user and then add the tag to a trigger to escalate the ticket to a specific support group.
  2. You can add tags from SalesIQ by clicking on the Add Tag link.
  1. The Tags added in SalesIQ dashbord will be pushed to Zendesk.


Adding Zoho SalesIQ’s Email Signature for the Emails Sent from Zendesk

  1. Login to your ZenDesk account.
  2. Click on the “gear” icon at the left bottom.
  3. Navigate to “channels” section.
  4. Select “email “ from the list.
  5. Scroll down to “Email Template”
  6. Go to “HTML Template” section and copy the signature chat code as to where you would like to display the chat button.


Getting your Zoho SalesIQ Signature Chat Code

Zoho SalesIQ gives you a unique code snippet for each specific Email Signature embed. You just have to copy and paste the "Email Signature" into your right Signature directories, to get the Signature Chat in your mails which you send.



  1. Navigate to Settings > Brands > Brand name > Email Signature.
  2. Scroll down to the bottom section you will find the signature code which you required to paste it in your Email signature directories.

Integrating Zoho SalesIQ Chat Widget with Zendesk Help Center



How to Add Zoho SalesIQ to Your Zendesk Help Center?

  1. Go to your Zendesk help center, select “Customize design” in General drop-down.

  1. Click “Edit theme”.

  1. Select a page from the menu.

  1. Paste the Zoho Zoho SalesIQ code snippet in the template’s HTML.
  2. Click “Save” at the top of the sidebar to save your changes.
  3. Publish the changes.

Getting your Zoho SalesIQ Code Snippet

  1. Login to your Zoho SalesIQ Operator console.
  2. Navigate to Settings -> Brands, click on the name of the brand that you are attempting to include in a page.
  3. Select Embed Code.
  4. Choose Website in the Installation codes section.
  5. In the Installation section, click Copy this code to copy the code snippet.



Note: To receive live chat notifications you should be logged in to https://www.zoho.com/salesiq

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