This is recipe 2 of 3 in our Cookbook for the customer-centric company.
Featured ingredient: Customer lists
This article contains the following sections:
A recipe for the retail (consumer) business
As shown in the first recipe in our cookbook, knowing your customers is the first step to creating a tailored experience for each and every customer. But even with all your customer information, how do you find common denominators across your customer base and group them so you can manage them more effectively?
This recipe takes you one step beyond custom user fields and details how you can use user field data to build customer lists—an organized list of your customers based on specified attributes.
Skill level: Intermediate
Time required: 30 minutes
Ingredient list
-
1 drop-down user field
-
1 date user field
-
1 checkbox user field
-
5 customer lists
Instructions
Step 1
Start by adding customer data in user fields in your Zendesk. This retail business example is going to focus on capturing customers’ product usage data, along with other data points that are important to the business.
| Name of field | Field type | Field options |
|---|---|---|
| Preferred product line | Drop-down |
Product line A Product line B Product line C |
| Subscription signup date | Date | Manual entry, via the API, or via bulk import |
| Average annual spend | Numeric | Manual entry, via the API, or via bulk import |
| VIP customer? | Checkbox | Set tag to "vip" |
Step 2
An alternative to adding custom user fields is to create a trigger that sets an user field to a specific value. For example, you can create a trigger so that whenever a customer submits a bad satisfaction rating, the customer gets flagged.
Set up the following custom user field:
| Name of field | Field type | Field options |
|---|---|---|
| Bad rating submitted | Checkbox | Set tag to "bad_rating" |
- Meet ANY of the following conditions:
- Ticket: Satisfaction is Bad
- Ticket: Satisfaction is Bad with comment
- Perform these actions:
- Requester: Bad rating submitted Yes
Step 3
Now with your user fields created, you can start building customer lists to start seeing who your customers are beyond the Zendesk Support ticket. Let's create lists to see which customers are using which product line, customers who've recently signed up, and the customers who are VIP.
| List name | Filters |
|---|---|
| Product line A | Preferred product line is Product line A |
| Product line B | Preferred product line is Product line B |
| Product line C | Preferred product line is Product line C |
| New customer in last 30 days | Created is within the previous 30 days |
| VIP customers | Tags contain at least one of the following: "vip" |
| Bad rating submitted | Tags contain at least one of the following: "bad_rating" |
Step 4
Customer lists are a great way to get a quick view of your customers outside of the ticket view. In addition, you can take action on these lists. You can easily export a customer list to a CSV file or use the MailChimp Campaign app or SurveyMonkey Create app to send an email or survey to a targeted customer list.
| List name | Recommended actions |
|---|---|
| Product line A | Email about new updates or announcements to product line A
Survey for product feedback with SurveyMonkey Create app |
| Product line B | Email about new updates or announcements to product line B
Survey for product feedback with SurveyMonkey Create app |
| Product line C | Email about new updates or announcements to product line C
Survey for product feedback with SurveyMonkey Create app |
| New customer in last 30 days | Welcome newsletter
Ask about the onboarding experience with SurveyMonkey Create app |
| VIP customers | Special email invite to an event or sale with MailChimp Campaign app |
| Bad rating submitted | Follow up with an email with MailChimp Campaign app |
A recipe for an organization with mobile-savvy customers
As businesses and their customers grow increasingly mobile, optimizing the experience on mobile devices becomes part of creating a great support experience. For organizations with a customer base that primarily engages via mobile devices, tracking mobile usage is critical.
This recipe walks you through how to build customer lists that capture mobile usage information and shows steps you can take to optimize your customers’ mobile experience.
Skill level: Intermediate
Time required: 20 minutes
Ingredient list
-
2 drop-down user fields
-
4 customer lists
Instructions
Step 1
Start by creating user fields that are relevant to your customers’ mobile usage. In this example, let's assume all of our customers are iOS users for simplicity’s sake. This can help give your team a sense of the mobile devices that your customers prefer and that you need to optimize for.
| Name of field | Field type | Field options |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile phone | Drop-down |
iPhone 11 iPhone 12 iPhone 13 iPhone 14 iPhone 15 |
| Tablet | Drop-down | iPad Pad AiriPad Mini |
| iOS version | Text | Via API |
Step 2
Using the mobile information stored in your custom user fields, you can start building customer lists to group customers who have the same preferences in mobile phones and tablets. There are many ways you can organize these lists. For example, you can create a list that captures all iPhone users and then sort the list by device. Or you can narrow in on one specific device model.
| List name | Filters | Group |
|---|---|---|
| Preferred mobile phone | Mobile phone is iPhone 11
Mobile phone is iPhone 12 Mobile phone is iPhone 13 Mobile phone is iPhone 14Mobile phone is iPhone 15 |
Group list by mobile phone |
| Preferred tablet | Tablet is iPad
Tablet is iPad Air Table is iPad Mini |
Group list by tablet |
| iPhone 5S | Mobile phone is iPhone 15 | |
| iOS version 7.0 | iOS version is 17 |
Step 3
These lists give you a quick view of which devices your customers prefer, so you know which devices you need to support. In addition, you can take proactive actions on these customer lists with the MailChimp Create app or SurveyMonkey Campaign app.
| List name | Recommended actions |
|---|---|
| Preferred mobile phone
Preferred tablet |
Email when there's a new update to your app
Email when Apple makes an update to iOS |
| iPhone 15 | Survey your biggest iOS enthusiasts. |
| iOS version 17 |
If you know there's a bug identified for a specific app version release, you can proactively reach out and alert these customers. |
The next recipe in our in our Customer-centric Cookbook is Gather customer info for every support request.