Workflow recipe: Using triggers to manage requests from important customers (custom org field)

What's my plan?

This workflow example shows how you can leverage features in Zendesk Support to provide valuable services for your important customers. You can use this example as a starting point for managing workflows in your own account.

This recipe uses custom organization fields and ticket tags to manage the workflow. Alternatively, if your account allows it, you can use multiple organizations to manage a similar workflow. For more information, see Workflow recipe: Using triggers to manage requests from important customers (multiple organizations).

The example includes:

• Workflow goal
• Creating a special group of agents to handle VIP customers
• Identifying your important customers
• Adding triggers to respond instantly
• Creating a view to monitor VIP ticket status
• Automating to ensure ticket follow up

Workflow goal

Your company has important customers who provide over 40% of your business. You can use Zendesk to help you expedite and prioritize support requests from these customers to make sure they stay happy.

Creating a special group of agents to handle VIP customers

Groups collect agents together, allowing admins to manage agent ticket assignments based on an agent’s special skills. For VIP customers, it’s good to identify senior agents on your team who are best-suited to help these customers.

To create the group

1. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Team > Groups.
2. Click Add group.
3. Enter a group name. In this case, name the group VIP Triage.
4. Select the agents you want to add to the group. Pick the senior agents who are best suited to handle important customers.
5. Click Create group.

   

6. When you're finished, click Save.

Identifying your important customers

Organizations are meaningful collections of your end users. You can use organizations to group users from the same company or department and identify which organizations you consider to be VIP customers.

Steps to do this include:

• Creating a custom organization field
• Identifying your VIP organizations

Creating a custom organization field

To provide special treatment for your VIP customers, create a custom organization field to help you identify which organizations are VIP customers. When you use the custom org field to identify VIP customers, tickets submitted by them are automatically tagged as important.

To create a custom organization field

1. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Configuration > Organization fields.

   In this case, you’ll add a simple checkbox to enable you to flag VIP customers.

2. Click Add field.
3. From the list of available fields, click Checkbox.
4. Add the following information to the checkbox.
   • Field title: VIP Customer?
   • Field key: vip_customer_
   • Description: Select this checkbox if the organization is considered a VIP customer.
   • Tag: vip_customer
5. Click Save.

   After you create the custom field, you can choose which organizations qualify as VIP Customers.

Identifying your VIP organizations

For each organization on your site, click the VIP customer? checkbox for any organization you consider to be a VIP customer. You can do this when you add a new organization (or edit your existing organizations).

To add a VIP new organization

1. In Support, click the Organizations icon () in the sidebar.
2. Click Add organization.
3. Enter the organization's name in the Name field. In this case, name the organization Writers Plus.
4. Enter the Email domains (separated by a space) of your VIP customer.

   Users from these email domains will be automatically added to this organization when they submit a request for the first time or register.

   If you add the same domain to multiple organizations, users are automatically mapped only to the first organization sorted alphabetically by name. For details, see Automatically adding users to organizations based on their email domain.

5. Click Add.

   The new organization is added and the organization details appear.

6. Select the VIP customer? checkbox to show that members of the Writers Plus organization are VIPs.

   

When you select the VIP Customer? checkbox, the vip_customer tag associated with this checkbox appears in the organization’s Tags field, and any tickets sent from users with a writersplus.com or writersplus.net email address will be tagged with vip_customer.

Now you can use this tag to trigger a special workflow for tickets sent from Writers Plus and your other VIP customers.

Adding triggers to respond instantly

Triggers are business rules you define to run immediately after tickets are created or updated. Once you have set up your VIP agent group and identified your VIP organizations, create a trigger that:

• Instantly replies to your VIP customers as soon as they submit a ticket
• Gives the ticket a high priority.

To add the trigger

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Click Add trigger.
3. Enter the following information for the trigger.

   For the trigger Name and Description:

   

   For the trigger Conditions:

   

   For the trigger Actions:

   

4. When you’ve finished adding the trigger name, description, conditions, and actions, click Create.

With this trigger, when these conditions are met:

• The ticket is sent from a customer in a VIP organization.
• A new ticket is created.
• The ticket hasn’t been solved, yet.

The following actions are performed:

• An email notification is sent to the ticket requester. See example below.
• The ticket priority is set to High.
• The ticket is assigned to the VIP Triage group.

The following is an example of an email notification sent to a VIP customer who submits a ticket. The ticket has been assigned to the VIP Triage group and the ticket priority is High.

Creating a view to monitor VIP ticket status

Views dynamically organize tickets based on specific criteria that you define. Using views can help you determine what tickets need attention from you or your team and plan accordingly. To keep an eye on how our VIP tickets are progressing, create a shared view that you and other members of your team can use to monitor ticket status.

To create the view

1. In Admin Center, click Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Views.
2. Click Add view.
3. Enter the following information for the view. This VIP Triage view will show any unsolved tickets that are tagged vip_customer.

   

4. To test your view conditions, click Preview match for the conditions above to see which tickets will appear in the view.

   

5. Scroll down to the Formatting options section to customize the table columns that appear in the view.
6. Because it’s important for you to quickly see when a ticket was last updated for VIP customers, drag the Last update column from the Columns not included in table list to the Columns included in table list.

   

7. Make sure the view is Available for All agents.
8. Click Save.

Once you create the view, you can click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select VIP Triage to view your VIP ticket status. This view includes when the tickets were last Updated.

Automating to ensure ticket follow up

To help manage your ticket workflow, you can automatically remind agents if an important ticket hasn’t been assigned in a timely manner. In these cases, use an automation, instead of a trigger to send the reminder.

Triggers are event-based business rules that can fire every time a ticket is created or updated. Automations are time-based business rules that perform an action in your account based on time elapsed.

To add the automation

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
2. Click Add automation.
3. Enter the following information for the automation.

   For the Automation title and Conditions:

   

   For the automation Actions:

   

4. When you’ve finished adding the automation title, conditions, and actions, click Create automation.

With this automation, when these conditions are met:

• The ticket was sent to the VIP Group.
• The ticket priority is High.
• The ticket was created more than 2 business hours ago.
• The ticket does not have an agent assigned, yet.

The following actions are performed:

• An email notification is sent to all members of the VIP Triage group. See example below.
• The ticket priority is changed from High to Urgent.

The following is an example of an email notification sent to members of the VIP Triage group when the automation conditions are met. The ticket priority has changed to Urgent.

Other useful automations include reminding agents if a ticket hasn’t been solved after a certain period of time, gently reminding customers who haven’t replied to an agent request for more information, and so on. To learn more about automations, check out the default Zendesk automations available in see About automations and how they work.