Support your customers via SMS with Text, a feature of Zendesk Talk (Talk Team, Professional, and Enterprise). With Text, you and your team can get creative about finding new ways to help customers with notifications, updates and proactive texts.
For general information about triggers and Text, see Automating SMS support with Text triggers.
This article contains the following topics:
Send automated text responses
When customers submit a request, set up this trigger to automatically notify them you've received it. For example, you might want customers to receive a text that says "We've received your message! We'll get back to you shortly."
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
- Click Add trigger.
- Enter a title for your trigger, like “Auto response to inbound text.”
- Add the following conditions and actions for your trigger (see screenshot below):
- Meets all of the following criteria:
- Ticket Channel Is SMS
- Ticket Is...Created
- Perform these actions:
- Notifications: SMS User: requester
- From (select SMS number)
- Body (include text you'd like in your automated outbound SMS)
- Meets all of the following criteria:
- Click Create trigger.
Alert agents when a ticket needs attention
Help ensure your agents prioritize tickets appropriately by notifying them when tickets that meet certain criteria need attention. This can be helpful if you want to prioritize tickets from VIP customers or have Service Level Agreement (SLA) targets to meet.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
- Click Add trigger.
- Enter a title for your trigger, like “VIP customer text update.”
- Add the following conditions and actions for your trigger (see screenshot below):
- Meets all of the following criteria:
-
- Ticket Is...Updated
- Organization Is: The organization of the VIP customer, in this example "Legal"
- Perform these actions:
- Notifications: Text Group
- From (select Text number)
- Body (include text you'd like in your automated outbound SMS)
- Click Create trigger.
Start a text conversation with proactive outbound texts
Reach out to customers on a personal level with proactive outbound text. For this recipe to work, you need to set up a trigger and then create the proactive ticket yourself.
To create a trigger
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
- Click Add trigger.
- Enter a title for your trigger.
- Add the following conditions and actions for your trigger (see screenshot below):
- Meets all of the following criteria:
- Ticket Is...Created
- Ticket: Tags Contains at least one of the following [create a tag like "proactive_text"]
- Perform these actions:
- Notifications: Text User: requester
- From (select Text number)
- Body: {{ticket.latest_public_comment}}
- Ticket status: closed
- Meets all of the following criteria:
- Click Create trigger.
Create a proactive ticket
To create a proactive ticket
- Click +Add - New… Ticket
- Make the requester your text recipient. The recipient must be a current end-user in the account.
- Assign an agent.
- Subject - anything that helps your team (will not affect the text)
- Description - type your outbound text message
- Tag: include “proactive_text” tag.
- Submit as Solved.
For repeated outbound texts, create a macro that’ll automatically add your proactive text tag and populate the description with your message. Learn more about macros here.
Respond to texts within a new ticket
If a customer responds to your outbound text, their reply text will create a new ticket. The text (or placeholder content) from the body of the trigger you created in the previous step will be added as an internal note in the newly created ticket. You can respond to that ticket as you would any other channel -- public responses will be sent as texts.
Now that you’ve tried our ideas, let us know in the comments how you and your team have used Text to help your customers!
44 Comments
Hello Emily,
Thanks for the article!
Can the images be made available in a higher resolution? It's hard to see what's on it currently.
With kind regards,
Sebastiaan
If i have an open ticket, and the end user would like the next public reply to be delivered to them via Text, can I do that?
For example, users creates request via email to support@yourco.com, "I need my account number and I am on my mobile phone. Pls text it to me at 999-000-1111".
That creates a ticket.
Can the agent, from that ticket, choose the reply method to be text?
That is a very common use case we would use - people start tickets via email, but want a response via mobile.
Thanks
If I want to simply send a text message to a specific phone number through ZenDesk; what is the fastest way to do this. The steps above require me to add a user; then add the phone number, then create a new ticket, then send the SMS. Is there a way to setup up something more streamlined lined like: create a new ticket > set the subject or a ticket field as the phone number > sent a public comment which goes out as a SMS?
I have the same question as Computer Overhauls? There is no way to send a quick message via text like I would for sending via email? This does sound like a lot of work.
Hi, Can you add a third party to join in on the text service or is this something for your messaging service (not sms). ideally I would like to answer a tex request and then include a third party to join the chat. thanks
Hey Craig -
Can you give us a little bit more info on your third party? Is it someone else from within your organization? Another service? Is it a person or a computer? Do they also need to be able to converse with the end user, or just with the agent?
That'll help us solve for you.
Hi Nicole.
Heres the context as an example:
I want to view a property to I message the estate agent, the agent the responds to my message and adds the property owner into the message string or "chat". I then allows the property seller to communicate directly with the property buyer with the agent also being able to contribute and view.
So in a nutshell the buyer can send a message from there phone device through a website and the agent can respond and then if need be add the seller (third party) to the text conversation.
Kind regards
Craig
Hey Craig -
Thanks for the additional detail. I'm going to take that to our chat experts, and I'll get back to you.
Hi Craig -
It doesn't seem like this is functionality that's native to the product, but you could head to the Chat Community and see if any other users have ideas for you.
Hey there,
I'm set up with proactive texts and adding users with their phone numbers... can I proactively send the same messages proactively to multiple users? Make groups of texts? Then break them out into tickets when they respond.
Steve
Hey Steven -
First of all, welcome to the Zendesk Community!
To make sure I'm understanding correctly, you're looking to send a proactive text in bulk, is that right? So to a bunch of people at once, as opposed to one message copied and pasted over and over?
Correct
Thanks, Steven.
To answer the first part of your question, yes, there is a way to send proactive texts in bulk. In order to do this, you need the Proactive Tickets app, which requires the Customer Lists add-on available to customers on Support Professional plans and above.
When those users respond, it should create a new ticket, showing the message that was sent to the user in a private comment.
Hello,
Please advice, I've set up the trigger and macro for sending proactive outbound texts and I've encountered two problems.
1. When the user replies to the outbound text it creates a new ticket and the subject of the ticket is just the user's phone number. (for example: Message from: Text user: +916*******) This is problematic because now I have to spend extra time figuring out who texted me back. How can I fix this?
2. Is there any way to connect the two tickets that come out of this situation. To clarify, is there a way to automatically link the outbound text send to the user's inbound response?
Birdie
Hi Birdie,
Those are great questions!
To answer your first question, the trigger we've suggested is designed to work this way. That is stated in the article "Note: Make sure that ticket status is set to “closed”. If your customers respond to your outbound texts, that will create a new ticket. Like other inbound texts, you can respond to your customers’ text via public comment in the ticket."
The purpose of this trigger is to send a one time message to the customer. If they reply back it will create a new ticket so that you can start a conversation. That is the only way to initiate an outbound text. If you did not set the ticket status as closed and the customer replied it would still create a new ticket.
As for your second question, there is no way to automatically link the tickets, unfortunately. You could change the action of the outbound text trigger to leave the ticket in "solved" status instead of "closed" which would allow you to merge the tickets but that would be the only means of linking them. You can read more about merging tickets here: Merging Tickets
Hi Stephen,
Thank you for the quick response! I think I might have phrased the first question incorrectly. Yes, it's frustrating that the tickets are separate, but this could be a little easier if the new ticket created when the person responses, has their name in the title. I've attached an example of what I need:
Instead, all I see is "Message from: Text user: +916*******" as the subject of the new ticket.
Thank you,
Birdie
Hi Birdie!
The first time a user texts you, it will only show their number unless they're an existing user in your Zendesk that has that number associated with their profile.
You can either add a name to the user profile from the text ticket, or you can merge that user profile with an existing profile for that user. Then the customer's name will appear in the ticket subject, instead of the number,.
Hope that helps!
Hi, I can't find the link where I can add the phone number to a user so I can text them after setting up my trigger. It isn't formatted properly if I put it in email field and if i just type the number directly in the requester field it says undefined and doesn't work.
I searched the site and can't see how to add it to user profile.
Hi Aimee!
In the user profile, click +add contact and a drop-down menu will appear with Phone as one of the options. Just add the phone number there, and make sure it's set as the direct line. Here's a screenshot of how to find it:
Hello,
Can you discuss the SMS unsubscribe process for users and rules associated with that?
I plan to send proactive texts over the course of a few days, but don't want to send them to users who have opted out using "STOP."
I'd also like to view who has unsubscribed.
Thank you,
Helen
Hi Helen!
I'm not totally sure how this works, so I'm looking for someone who can answer this for you!
Hello Helen,
Unfortunately, this is not something that is yet achievable.
The way this would work for now is that your customers, by responding stop, would create a ticket in your instance. You can use a trigger to route these tickets to a specific group and have an agent in this group taking the number off the user profile.
But there is nothing in place to automate this process, it would be something worth checking on our community forum though to see if there is already an existing request about this feature.
Here is the link to our community forum:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/200132066-Community-Product-feedback.
If you have any other question about your Zendesk, you can always contact us at support@zendesk.com.
Have a great rest of your day!
We have a trigger set up to send text notifications as described in this article which works most of the times. We are having problems when the user has multiple phone numbers associated with the user profile, it seems it always sends the text message to the phone number added first to the user profile.
For example, user is created with N1 which is a landline. Then we add N2 which is a mobile number. Text message is always sent to N1. Both N1 and N2 are set as direct line and we are setting N2 as the primary number, but the text message still goes to N1.
Hi,
How can i make sure that the end user doesn't receive an email notification along with the text/sms?
I have tried channel > is not > text condition, but that doesn't work.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010144347-Texting-users-also-sends-email-notifications-to-them
Is there any way I could stop the email going through?
Hi Aparna,
Sorry to hear that the ticket channel condition isn't working! I'm going to reach out to you via ticket to gather more information. You'll see an update from me soon via email!
Hi Amanda,
Have replied to your email. Sorry for the delay in coming back to you.
Hi, I can't seem to use the "{{ticket.latest_public_comment}}" placeholder. I'd like to use this trigger to send a custom text each time (basically, have a new outbound text from our support #), so I'd rather not have a generic text be sent out.
Hi, I have set up text and the trigger works for an outgoing new text message, BUT we usually have an automated signature on all our zendesk tickets, can I turn this off for when a Text message is sent? or is it possible to use an alternative signature?
@Aparna - This is 11 months later, but there is this article here that can help with the additional emails being sent: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010144347-Texting-users-also-sends-email-notifications-to-them
(hopefully you've solved this already since your post!)
@Debs: Same problem, and i've still not been able to find a resolution to this. It's driving me a little mad.
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