This recipe describes how to use the Zendesk Bump-Bump-Solve method to clean-up outdated, dormant tickets in your account. Using business rules, you can set time intervals to first notify the requester that you're waiting for a response and then eventually notify the requester that a dormant ticket has been marked as solved.
This process includes:
- An automation which will "bump" the ticket requester after the ticket has been Pending for four days
- An automation which will solve out and notify the customer three days later
- A trigger which will be used to reset this process if/when the customer responds after either of these notifications.
This article includes the following sections:
Workflow goal
This recipe shows you how to notify (Bump) the ticket requester after four calendar days, notify (Bump) the ticket requester again after six calendar days if you're still waiting for a response, then solve (Solve) the ticket after seven calendar days. To meet your own requirements, you can modify this workflow to use different time intervals or set business days instead of calendar days, whatever you prefer.
Video guide
Watch the video below for a visual guide on how to accomplish this workflow.
Automating the first reminder (Bump)
Because you want to remind the customer based on the time the ticket has been pending, rather than based on a particular ticket event that has occurred, use an automation rather than a trigger to send the reminder.
Create a bump automation to remind the ticket requester that the ticket has been in Pending status for four days. Set conditions and actions that ensure the automation runs only once per pending status and that it runs only after a designated period of time (four calendar days). As such, this automation will be adding a unique tag to the ticket (and checking that it's not there) as well as notifying the requester. The automation you set up should look something like this:
To automate the first reminder
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Click Add automation.
- Enter the following information for the automation.
For the automation Name and Conditions:
The Ticket: Tags condition checks that two tags are not present on the ticket. The first tag, bump1, is used to signify that the automation has already fired and the customer has been notified. Since we're planning to send a second notification (after 6 days) before solving the ticket, the bump1 tag is added after the first notification so you can distinguish between the first and second notifications.
The second tag, dont_bump, can be used as a fail-safe by agents if they do not want this automated process to occur for any particular ticket. In these cases, agents can manually add the dont_bump tag to the ticket to prevent any of the bump automations from running.
For the automation Actions:
- When you’ve finished adding the automation name, conditions, and actions, click Create automation.
With this automation, when these conditions are met:
- The ticket status has been Pending for more than 4 days (96 hours).
- The ticket does not have a bump1 or dont_bump tag.
The following actions are performed:
- An email notification is sent to the ticket requester. See example below.
- A bump1 tag is added to the ticket to track that the first bump reminder has been sent.
The following is an example of the email notification sent to a customer after one of their tickets is pending for more than 4 days.
Automating the second reminder (Bump)
For tickets that remain pending, even after the first reminder is sent, create a second bump automation that sends a second reminder if the ticket is still pending after 6 days.
To automate the second reminder
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Click Add automation.
- Enter the following information for the automation.
For the automation Name and Conditions:
For the automation Actions:
- When you’ve finished adding the automation name, conditions, and actions, click Create automation.
With this automation, when these conditions are met:
- The ticket status has been Pending for more than 6 days (144 hours).
- The ticket does not have a bump2 or dont_bump tag.
- The bump1 tag has already been added to the ticket, which means that the first notification was already sent and the ticket is ready for a second notification.
- A check that the ticket was updated longer than two days (48 hours) prior (when the first automation ran). This condition ensures that when you first implement this process, and you already have tickets pending for more than 6 days, your end users will not all be notified and then notified again an hour later or at the same time.
A customer's response to the notification will reopen the ticket and our clean-up trigger will need to remove all of the bump tags from the ticket to reset this process.
The following actions are performed:
- An email notification is sent to the ticket requester. See example below.
- A bump2 tag is added to the ticket to track that the second bump reminder has been sent.
The following is an example of the email notification sent to a customer after one of their tickets is pending for more than 6 days and they didn't reply to the first notification.
Automatically solving the ticket (Solve)
Now that you've notified your requester twice and given them adequate time to respond, create another automation to come in and close the ticket. This automation will need to do two things: solve the ticket and notify the requester.
To solve the ticket
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
- Click Add automation.
- Enter the following information for the automation.
For the automation Name and Conditions:
For the automation Actions:
- When you’ve finished adding the automation name, conditions, and actions, click Create automation.
With this automation, when these conditions are met:
- The ticket status has been Pending for more than 7 days (168 hours).
- The ticket has a bump2 tag to show that two notifictions have been sent.
- It's been more than 24 hours since the ticket was last updated.
The following actions are performed:
- An email notification is sent to the ticket requester. See example below.
- The ticket status is changed to Solved.
The following is an example of the email notification sent to a customer when a pending ticket is automatically marked solved.
If the requester responds to the notification before the ticket changes from solved to closed, the ticket will be reopened and a clean-up trigger should activate as well.
Automatically cleaning-up the ticket
As a final step, add a clean-up trigger. This trigger removes any of the bump-solve process tags if a ticket is reopened. This trigger is needed if the ticket is reopened and the agent responds and sets it back to pending. In this case, cleaning up the bump-bump-solve tags enables the process to run again, even though it has already run.
To clean up the process tags
- In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
- Click Add Trigger.
- Enter the following information for the trigger.
Under Meet ALL of the following conditions, add:
Status | Changed to | Open
Current user | Is | (end-user)
Tags | Contains at least one of the following | bump 1 bump 2
For the trigger Actions, add:
Remove tags | bump1 bump2
- Click Create trigger.
And that's all there is to it! With these three or four business rules, you'll have an automated process that will automatically remind customers that you're waiting for their response and eventually solve it if they don't. You'll no longer have to worry about managing pending tickets.
Fore more information, see the articles below:
39 comments
Ryan Knutson
If I change the condition Ticket Hours Since Update to Ticket Hours Since Requester Update, will this allow me to add internal notes without messing up the timing? My issue is that I will call to follow up after the BBS has started. I will add an internal note and this messes up the timing of the BBS.
0
Brett Bowser
Hey Ryan, yes if you change to Hours Since Requester Update, that should fix the issue where the timer resets after you've updated the ticket with an internal note.
Let us know if you have any other questions!
0
Permanently deleted user
When I try to implement the second bump, I get the following:
I don't understand why or how as I am adding this exactly as in the example.
6
Sophie
Hi, I'm not sure if it's just me, but I seem to be missing the instructions for the final step, "Automatically cleaning-up the ticket" - is anyone able to confirm what this should be?![](/hc/user_images/-Tk0PZBsau52muE_Q9PPbQ.png)
1
Brett Bowser
Hey Sophie,
The conditions should just look for the tags that you set up in your previous bump automations. As for the actions, you'll want to either use Remove Tag > (tag name) or the Set Tag > (tag name) which will remove all other tags from the ticket.
Let me know if that's not what you're looking for!
0
Megan Romero
Shouldn't there also be a trigger to remove these bump tags from follow-up tickets and not just when these tickets are re-opened? I would think that you wouldn't want the follow-up tickets to start off with the tags and therefore prevent the bump-solve process from starting over.
0
Brett Bowser
Hey Megan,
Great call-out! You can definitely set up a trigger that fires on tickets created as a follow-up. The conditions below should help:
Conditions:
Ticket > Created
Channel > is > Closed Ticket
Actions:
Set tags > (follow_up)
or
Remove Tags > (bump_tags)
Cheers!
0
Sophie
Hey @... thanks for your reply! Do you know what the conditions would be here (assuming you'd followed the rest of the recipe above)? Just trying to get my head around this!
0
Brett Bowser
Hey Sophie,
No worries! Triggers and automations can be a bit confusing at first but once you get the hang of it you'll be unstoppable :)
You should be able to set up your trigger to use the following:
Conditions:
Ticket > is > Updated
Current user > is > end-user
Tags > contains one of the following > bump1 bump2
Status > changed to > Open
Actions:
Remove tags > bump1 bump2
That's all there is to it!
0
Nahuel Sznajderhaus
It is possible to add an action for each bump message that puts an internal comment in the ticket for the agent/support team to see?
2
Michael Froeming
Hi Nahuel,
Natively, this isn't possible as there are no such automation action to make an internal comment when it runs.
As a workaround, this is possible by creating a URL target. This will allow you to set a trigger/automation to carry out a certain action upon the ticket that the trigger or automation ran on. Here's a community post for the steps to set it up: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360031398273.
Just a reminder though that this workflow is not recommended or supported. When a ticket is updated by business rules and the API simultaneously, errors are likely to occur. When this happens, it is called a race condition. Here's a related article that discusses this: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/234658247-Can-I-use-a-trigger-and-a-target-to-update-tickets-.
Best,
Michael Froeming | Senior Customer Advocacy Specialist
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0
Jah Tan
Do we have a way to send a recurring email reminder based on user tag via trigger/automation?
0
Abraham K.
An indefinite reminder set for a specific interval would not be possible as that sort of function would be too easily exploited or just misconfigured to create spam traffic from our systems. You can modify the automations to have a larger number of reminders, but there must be a finite number of business hours between the last interaction from the customer and when the events run. The best practice under our current logic and ticket structure is define a point where the ticket will get closed out from non-communication and if they reply after that point our system will be able to build a new Follow-Up ticket that links back to the older request in the system.
Hope this helps you understand things a bit better!
0
Jah Tan
thank you!
0
Marc Dufour
This looks great but I'd like to implement this as an opt-in function. That is to say that all open tickets would NOT bump unless we remove the tag, or add a tag.
What would be the easiest way to accomplish this? I can't quite wrap my head around it.
Can we automatically add "dont_bump" to all currently open tickets, and then add that when a new ticket is created? Then if someone wants the ticket to run, just remove the tag?
EDIT:
I'll try adding the tag through bulk edit.
0
Marc Dufour
Also Andrea above never got a reply. I'm trying to implement the first bump and getting this error. The only difference that I made was that the ticket needs to be assigned to me so I can do some testing.
Automation could not be created as:
EDIT: In case someone else has this, don't forget the "add tag" activity at the bottom of the email section.
:)
0
Dave Dyson
First, on the error you're receiving: note that in the Actions section of the automations, they add a tag (bump1 for the first automation), and the same automation checks to make sure that tag is not included. It's likely that you've neglected to include adding that tag in your automation -- can you check that? If that is included, can you include screenshots of both the conditions and actions sections of your automation?
Second, as for making this an "opt-in": right now, the automations include a criteria that prevents them from firing on tickets that include the tag "no_bump". You could remove the no-bump tag from the criteria, and add an additional criteria to each of the automations:
Ticket: tags include at least one of the following: bump_it
Then I'd recommend creating a shared macro that adds the bump_it tag (use Add tags and not Set tags, so you don't remove all other tags on the ticket!), so your agents can easily add the tag without having to remember the exact spelling of the tag.
Hope that helps!
1
Patrick Arrastia
Hi!
We're building out automated ticket reminders to customers and are using the field > Notifications: Email user (requester and CCs) >
is there a way for the content of this notification to appear in the ticket in a similar fashion that an agent email to a requester would appear?
Thanks in advance, and have a great day!
1
Silas Johnson
Im having tons of trouble with the first bump. It is not sending me the first email notification, even though in the events, it said that the automation fired, and it also tags the ticket stating that it fired.
I have tried this so many times with multiple emails even. Checked spam, everything. The second bump (solve) works just fine and send the email. Any help is appreciated
0
Marc Dufour
@...
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm doing something similar. I'm adding a don't bump tag to the tickets, but your suggestion makes so much more sense! I'll work on that change now.
Of course one thing I noticed is when i started this off on a ticket that was already x hours old, it could potentially kick off all 3 automations at the same time! So the key to that is to update the ticket first, then activate,
Does adding a tag count as an update?
0
Marc Dufour
Note that the last step to clean up also works to remove any bump tags on tickets that are replied to by the client. The ticket is set to "open" which triggers the the clock reset with it being an Update, and it will get a new set of bumps as all tags are removed.
This seems to work well.
0
Marc Dufour
I found a deficiency in the first bump logic.
Lets say the first bump is a 3 day kick off.
If I reply to a ticket that was pending with an update, not asking for any input from the customer, and the following 48 hours I ask for an update from the customer, the bump will execute. Even though my last request was a request to update only 24 hours prior.
I'm not sure how to adjust it, One would need to manually remove the tag, save, re-add the tag to reset the counter, I guess.
I'm using the opt-in method
0
Ulises
Hi,
I'm trying to send 2 reminders (3 and 7 days later) to the requester no matter if there are any updates from either end. I was able to make it work using the time after a ticket was created, the problem is that the timer needs to start after a specific custom field is selected and this could happen 2 or 3 days after the ticket creation.
Any ideas how I can make this happen?
0
Dave Dyson
I think the only way to do that without creating an external script to measure those time intervals would be to set your ticket Types to "Task" and set the Due Date to the date that specific custom field was selected. You'd then be able to use "Hours since due date", which would measure the number hours that have passed since Noon (relative to your Zendesk instance's time zone setting), and you could create two Automations, one that sends a notification 72 hours after the due date, and another that sends a notification 168 after the due date.
0
Ulises
Thanks @...,
The issue here is this process needs to be automated from the moment the custom field is present. Unfortunately, the agent must change the type to task and select the due date since there isn't an action in triggers, automations, or macros to set a due date.
0
Dave Dyson
0
Katie R.M.
I set up a "bump and solve" automation but when it runs, it's wiping out all of the data that the agent submitted in the ticket fields. How do I stop that from happening? There is no uniform data set that applies universally to all tickets so setting the fields to a certain value is not an option.
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Katie, I'll create a ticket on your behalf so we can check this issue. You'll receive an email shortly, thank you :)
0
Ryan Waskewich
I have this set up and it is working except it is not including the previous comments in the ticket with the email. It is pretty useless if the previous ticket comments are not included as customers dont know the ticket number and which issue it relates to. I have included the {{ticket.public_comments_formatted}} tag but it is not working as expected.
0
Dane
I have created this ticket for you to test the behavior of your placeholders.
Please wait for my email and let's continue from there.
0