Using Text notifications with triggers: Recipes and tips (Talk Team, Professional, and Enterprise)

Important: You are responsible for using the call and text features in Zendesk Talk in compliance with all applicable laws. Zendesk does not control the content of your telephonic communications, when they are made, or the recipients of the communications. Certain jurisdictions may require end-user consent prior to initiating telephonic outreach. By enabling these features, you agree that you have received the required consent.

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.

Warning: If your Zendesk account has a high ticket turnover and you are using text triggers, this will generate a high number of outgoing text messages. When a high number of text messages are sent from the same number, they might be marked as spam by the mobile networks. Before you configure text triggers, consider if this is the right solution for you.

This article contains the following topics:

• Send automated text responses
• Alert agents when a ticket needs attention
• Start a text conversation with proactive outbound texts
• Create a proactive ticket
• Respond to texts within a new ticket

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."

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Click Add trigger.
3. Enter a title for your trigger, like “Auto response to inbound text.”
4. 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)
5. Click Create trigger.

Tip: Use unformatted placeholders to personalize your text support. Learn more about placeholders here.

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.

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Click Add trigger.
3. Enter a title for your trigger, like “VIP customer text update.”
4. 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)
5. 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

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Click Add trigger.
3. Enter a title for your trigger.
4. 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
5. Click Create trigger.

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. If you do not wish to send an email notification, add your "proactive_text" tag to a Ticket:Tags Contains none of the following condition in your Notify requesters of received request trigger. See How do I prevent email notifications from being sent out on SMS tickets? in our Support tech notes.

Create a proactive ticket

To create a proactive ticket

1. Click +Add - New… Ticket
2. Make the requester your text recipient. The recipient must be a current end-user in the account.
3. Assign an agent.
4. Subject - anything that helps your team (will not affect the text)
5. Description - type your outbound text message
6. Tag: include “proactive_text” tag.
7. 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.

Tip: Send proactive texts in bulk using the Proactive Ticket app (requires Customer Lists, an Add-on available to customers on Support Professional plans and above). Learn more 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!