The Zendesk Facebook channel lets customers make support requests using Facebook. It also lets your agents see and respond to customer Wall posts and comments from within your Zendesk.
The Facebook channel supports Facebook Pages, which are different from personal timelines. Facebook Pages help businesses, organizations, and brands share their stories and connect with people. See this Facebook article to learn more about the differences. You can create and manage a Facebook Page from your personal account.
You can add up to fifteen Facebook Pages to the Facebook channel. You have to be an administrator or have appropriate role permissions to set up the Facebook channel in Zendesk.
Topics covered in this article:
- How the Facebook channel works
- Setting up the Facebook channel
- Editing your Facebook channel
- Adding another Facebook Page
- Managing Facebook tickets with business rules
- Troubleshooting
You can also watch this short video.
How the Facebook channel works
After setting up your Facebook channel, your Zendesk monitors your organization's Facebook Page. Every new Wall post or direct message automatically becomes a Zendesk Support ticket. If the posting user is not already a user in your Zendesk, he or she becomes a new user in your Zendesk. If your channel has multiple Facebook pages and a new user posts on more than one page, a separate user account is created for each page on which that user posts.
- For standard wall posts, only comments received in the first week after the post will be added to the ticket
- Comments received after the first week are not added to the ticket and no new ticket is created
- If you post an ad to your wall, a ticket is created. Comments are recorded in the ticket for one year after the posting. However, if you close the ticket, comments will no longer be recorded
If you would like comments to be added as new tickets, you can enable the Comments as Tickets feature under Admin > Channels > Facebook > Edit. Replies to that comment are then added to the created ticket.
An agent working in Zendesk can respond to a Wall post by adding a public comment to the ticket in Zendesk Support. The agent's response is added as a comment to the Facebook post. In the following Wall post, for example, an agent answered the user's question in the Zendesk Support agent interface.
Here's the corresponding ticket in the agent interface:
You can set up a view in your Zendesk to see all your Facebook tickets in one place.
In addition to automatically converting Wall posts to tickets, you can set up your Facebook channel so that private messages sent to the Facebook Page become tickets. This means that a user can ask a private question, and an agent can have a one-on-one conversation with the user. Users click the Message button on your Facebook Page to send a private message.
Setting up the Facebook channel
To set up your Facebook channel to monitor a Facebook page
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
- Click the Add your first Facebook Page link. If you already have a Facebook page, click Add
- Enter your Facebook credentials, if you are not already logged in.
- When asked, be sure you grant Zendesk access to your account.
- In the Add Facebook Pages to your account window, locate the page you want to add, and select the permissions you want to include:
- Click Add for the Facebook Page you'd like to link to your Zendesk.
- If you have multiple Facebook Pages, click Add for another Facebook Page or close the window.
The Facebook Page you added appears on your Facebook Channel page. You can edit the settings now, if you'd like. By default, any Wall post is converted to a ticket, including those by the page owner.
Editing your Facebook channel
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
- Click Edit beside the Facebook Page you'd like to edit settings for.
- In the Include Wall posts section, select No if you don't want Wall posts automatically converted to tickets. Otherwise, leave it as is.
- Select Comments on a post are added to the same ticket to add responses on Wall posts as replies to the Wall post's ticket.
- Select Comments on a post create new tickets to add responses on Wall posts as new tickets.
- Select Include hidden posts to review posts that haven't been approved by the page as tickets in Zendesk Support.
- Deselect Include Wall posts authored by the Page if you don't want posts by the Facebook Page owner converted to tickets.
- Select Include unpublished posts to review unpublished posts (also known as dark posts) as tickets in Zendesk Support. This will also allow Facebook ads to convert to tickets.
- In the Include private messages section, select Yes if you want private messages converted to tickets.
- Click Update Page settings.
Note: If you don't see the Message button on your Facebook Page, you need to enable it. In your Facebook Page, select Manage > Edit Page, then select Show Message button and click Save Changes.
Adding another Facebook Page
You can monitor up to 15 Facebook Pages from your Zendesk account. Keep in mind that there are still limits that Facebook places on traffic from external sources, so it is possible that your account might make too many requests. This has more to do with how many posts and messages you retrieve than how many pages you enable. Also, keep in mind that if a new user posts on more than one page, a separate user account is created for each page on which that user posts.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Facebook.
- Click Add new Page.
- Enter your Facebook credentials, if you are not already logged in.
- In the Add Facebook Pages dialog box, select Import recent activity if you want to create tickets from existing messages or posts. Zendesk will import the last week of activity (up to 250 tickets).
- Click Add beside the Page you'd like to add.
The Facebook Page appears in Facebook Channel page.
Managing Facebook tickets with business rules
- Ticket: Channel values:
- Facebook Post returns tickets created from posts.
- Facebook Private Message returns tickets created from private messages.
- Ticket: Integration account lets you pick a specific Facebook account if you’ve added more than one. This condition also has options for Twitter and channel integrations like Google Play.
Troubleshooting
If you need help fixing a problem with your Facebook channel, see Troubleshooting issues with your Facebook channel.
127 Comments
Hi,
Are there any updates on this?
I can see on their API there is reference to May 8th changes, https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/reference/send-api/
Does this impact this issue?
Hey Claude! I'm checking on this for you; I'll let you know what I find out!
every time I am trying to add facebook page to zendesk and it said the account doesn't admin any pages. The facebook account did admin pages, and not just one.
What could be the issue?
Hi Andy,
Thank you for bringing your issue to our attention! To best serve you, I will be creating a ticket where I will be reaching out to you so we can really dig into this issue. You should be receiving an email from us shortly :-)
Issue when sending message, just started . It was working fine before . Now there is an error in read that cannot send the message to the chat. We receive messages fine.
Hi Mh!
Sorry to hear about these issues. These issues involve account-specific information, so I've created a ticket for us where we can resolve them. You'll receive an email shortly :)
Cheers,
Hello,
is there a plan to make it possible to add attachments to public answers?
BR
Lars
Hi Lars -
I don't believe there's a way to have attachments in Facebook posts - is that what you are asking about, or have I misunderstood your question?
Hi
We notice that posts to facebooks add are not submitted as tickets? How can we change that so we will have all posts on Zendesk?
Thanks
Yael
Hi Yael!
Can you give some more detail on what's going on? Do you have the Facebook channel set up? Can you tell me what your settings are currently? What kinds of posts aren't being created as tickets?
Hi Jessie,
Thank you for your follow up -
I have setup the facebook channel. I've added now also the hidden posts, but the posts I didn't get as tickets were posts to adds that we targeted only some of the audience.
Thank you
Hello, quick question please, how do we use the option to reply to a public message with an inbox in zendesk? The option is there on facebook (see image) but I can´t find it on zendesk. This basically lets you respond to a public comment with a private message (through facebook messenger). Thanks!
Hi Esteban,
There's no way to reply to a public message via a private message with our FB integration currently. This is functionality which we do not currently have available as it's something which we haven't yet built into the integration. You're welcome to submit a feature request for this in our Product Feedback forum here.
Best,
Amie
Hi,
I have a similar question to Yael's above. Are the only types of content that create Zendesk tickets, direct posts to your Facebook page or when someone @'s you in a post (not comment)?
What about comments on Facebook Ads or organic posts or direct messages? e.g. we run an ad promoting a sale, someone comments on it or we post about a sale, someone comments on it, do these get created as tickets?
I'm looking for a holistic solution to avoid having to manually monitor Facebook and trying to determine what already got responded to via Zendesk and what didn't. Ideally, all user comments and messages would flow in as tickets.
Hi David -
At the moment, yes, those are the only types of posts that create tickets in Zendesk. There is currently an Early Access Program (what we used to call a "Beta") running for FB ad comments. Would you like me to see about getting you added to that?
@Nicole, yes that would be great. Could you email me the details?
Hey David -
I'm checking in with the product manager and will reach out to you via a ticket once I've gotten more details on the beta. Look for an email from me in the next day or two.
If we need to move a user's comment to their own ticket, can the user access that new ticket if we're using SSO with our own portal? Would this only be possible if they create a Zendesk account with their Facebook account?
What functionality does a Facebook created end-user possess?
Hi Nicole, we'd like to be added to the Facebook Ads integration EAP as well, please feel free to email me about this.
Hi Amanda,
Your customers can log-in to your Help Center to view and update their tickets if you're using Guide Professional or a Legacy plan. If the option to allow end-users to sign-in with Facebook is enabled in your account, users can use their Facebook account to sign-in to your Help Center.
If the second ticket you're creating is using the user's email address as the ticket requester and the first is using the user's Facebook profile, a new user will be created in your Zendesk for this email address if one does not exist already.
When signing-in to the Help Center with Facebook SSO for the first time, end-users are prompted to enter their email address. If the user is able to verify their Zendesk password for this address, the two users are merged into one profile — this allows the user to see tickets requested from their Facebook profile or by that address. If the user is unable to complete this step, an agent can manually merge the duplicate profiles. You'll find more information on how Social SSO for end-users works here.
I hope this helps! We're happy to help if you have any other questions on this.
Hi there
I didn't see (or may have missed) a response to Raphael's comment last year - can anyone confirm?
Hi Kim!
The functionality Raphael mentioned isn't currently available with the Facebook integration. I would recommend posting your detailed use case over in our Product Feedback topic to ensure that our Product Managers see it!
Hi!
It seems on my zendesk account that when a customer includes an image/screenshot, our Support team can't view them without their own login to facebook. For security, our support team doesn't have direct access to our facebook messenger or the ability to post as our company on our fb page. Such access is given to them via zendesk. Is there a way to give them access to images sent via private messages directly within the zendesk ticket?
Hi Bryan,
Sadly this is not possible. In order to access the images the Agent would need to have a Facebook login. Facebook is a Plain Text channel in Zendesk, and as such unless it is viewable through Facebook itself which would require logging in, the agent would not be able to view.
Hi I would like to ask that, our fb page is about app, and it was added a new section "review", it's possible to add the comments in zendesk too? to deal the reviews on FB is really hard and ineffective.
Is there any update or workaround on the personal fb settings regarding 3rd party apps not receiving messages via zendesk ticket? I came from using SnapEngage and there were zero issues with their software. Snapengage was chat software, so maybe that is the difference. I did not see a way to do FB messages other than as a ticket thru ZenDesk.
@ hello,
At present the Zendesk integration unfortunately does not convert reviews into tickets, and there are currently no short term plans to implement this feature.
Apologies
@ Meghan, can you explain what you when you say no 3rd party apps receiving messages via Zendesk Ticket?
Thanks
We currently support three languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese) and we have three different Facebook profiles where we received PM messages that integrate into Zendesk. however, the language does not get imported and and defaults to English. We're currently converting most of our macros to dynamic content and will often need to go into each ticket profile, flip the language and then re-apply a macro. Is there a way to import the language from the get go.
@claudia we are unable to use Zendesk to reply to some facebook private messages. Please see Zendesk article: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/226863747-Why-Facebook-private-messages-may-not-populate-to-a-Zendesk-ticket
Hey @Meghan,
I created a ticket for you so we can look into this :)
@Andrea if you have a different Facebook page per each language, you can set up a trigger link the link below to set the requester language: https://monosnap.com/file/Y4TPtCZSq4rPK3VGrx2dw5A6tnXXSW
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