Merging two Zendesk accounts - a step-by-step process

As long as Zendesk Support and Guide support a multibranding feature, there are no more reasons to continue using separate accounts for different brands. You can manage everything in a single one. However, what should you do if you already have two or more Zendesk accounts for separate products each having valuable historical data that you can’t leave behind. Then, the best decision would be a data migration that will result in merging data from several Zendesk accounts into a single one. 

Why businesses may need to merge two Zendesk accounts

There are actually plenty of cases when companies decide to merge Zendesk accounts into a single one. The background of each mostly lies in maintaining the full context of customer relationships on hand.

As mentioned before, there are companies that own a separate account for each product or service it sells. However, over time, it may seem more logical to move to a single instance as it’s easier to use Zendesk multibranding features than operating two accounts. Thus, your agents will have vital information about previous customer’s interactions at the arm’s reach and save huge amounts of time.

The other popular reason for merging data into one Zendesk instance is a closure of one of the company's agencies or when a product manufacturing stops. Not all businesses work out. However, there are still customers that require support after purchasing a product. And the only workable solution is to move the database of the existing clients to a remaining agency’s instance. That will also provide your support agents with a vital background for supporting existing clients in case of old staff reduction. 

Lastly, merging two Zendesk instances can be useful when consolidating support teams taking over the support from another department. If leaving a significant part of customer interaction history behind is not an option for you, then the best resolution is to merge two Zendesk instances into one. 

Now, when we’ve discussed the most popular cases of merging two help desk accounts that we met on our way in data migration, let’s see how users can prepare for such a process.

How to prepare your Zendesk accounts

In this section, we’ll mention some of the general steps of preparing for data migration and also explain what are the peculiarities of migrating from and to Zendesk. 

Step 1. Qualify your data 

It’s the most essential part of the preparation as it will save you a load of time in the future, plus, time and money during the migration process. What we mean by this step is reviewing everything from top to bottom and leaving only the records that you will need in your future help desk instance indeed. It may seem that you will need ALL of your historical data in the future, however, there are a lot of records that may be irrelevant in your future sales and support workflows. Yes, there are usually plenty of records that you haven’t used for months of even years that will definitely be odd during the migration. Also, we recommend you to look for the following info and delete it without back thoughts:

• Unassigned tickets
• Invalid emails
• Duplicate records
• Contacts that have no ticket history
• Past calendar events

The best people to deal with this kind of a job are your support agents that work with these records everyday. Assign this task to reliable people on the support team as they will know if you can take advantage of this or that in the future.

Step 2. Choose the right time for the data migration

It may seem a bit odd to set a specific date for such a process, but we insist on picking one. If you take a wild guess with Zendesk data migration, it will leave you with immense downtimes if you’re lucky. In the worst scenario, your records can just get mixed up and that’s definitely not what you want as the outcome. 

You should thoroughly review your helpdesk-related workflow to pick a time frame with an insignificant number of customer requests coming into the system. Both data migration and the support team’s workflow should not interfere with new tickets.

Step 3. Update your team 

This step includes giving your employees a general idea of the data migration process. Mainly, it’s needed for your team to know about the final transition date so that they can start closing tickets in the instance you’re exporting customer data from. Once again, this way, you will avoid getting ticket updates in the old account. They can get lost in the process of migration but turn out to be very useful for maintaining up-to-date customer relationship status. 

Step 4. Switch customer support to the new account 

In the ideal case scenario, you should fully stop using the source Zendesk account during the data migration process. You can keep the target account up and running to go on with customer support, but make sure you’ve linked all the support channels to it. The source account should be completely stopped by the time of data migration so that new customer requests won’t arrive to the old repository. Otherwise, you’ll have to update the new data you’ve missed out on, or a part of the data structure will be damaged.

Step 5. Arrange the target Zendesk account

As we mentioned before, when merging two Zendesk instances, you will have to pick which one will be the main (target) one. First of all, it’s needed to know which account will be completely closed from serving customers. Secondly, you will have to match the arrangement of both accounts so that there will be no inaccuracies in the future. 

Here’s what you should consider: 

1. Make sure you have all agent seats needed. It may sound obvious, but people often forget that they may run out of seats as there can be more agents added to the existing Zendesk account when merging data. If you forget to purchase additional seats, the tickets (and all related data) may end up with a different arrangement. And you surely don’t want to spend extra time sorting that out. 
2. Check if all the custom fields match. If different people worked behind your Zendesk accounts, it’s natural that the custom fields they created can vary. On this step, you will make sure that all the necessary custom fields exist in the target instance so that the ticket mapping field will proceed without any hiccups. 
3. Recreate macros and canned responses. Similarly to custom fields, check if your team has all the necessary macros in the main account to save time after the data migration. 
4. Turn off all triggers, automations, and notifications. These guys will not only hinder the data migration process but also might send out unnecessary messages to both your agents and customers. Also, such things as scenario automations can result in altering some parts of your data structure. So, simply disable them before the migration to avoid any issues. 

Now, you’re all set for the data migration, so let’s head out to the process itself. 

Merging Zendesk data with HDM service 

If you are planning on Zendesk data merging, you can use our Help Desk Migration service. This way, you will be able to migrate: 

• Tickets together with Attachments, Public and Private Notes, and CC;
• Contacts and Organizations;
• Agents and Groups;
• Knowledge Base Articles and Attachments; 
• Custom Fields;
• Tags.

Here’s how the data migration process goes on: 

1. Sign up on our website. You can use your email or social media, the registration itself requires no credit card details. Then, you will be able to access the automated data migration tool called Migration Wizard. 

2. Now, you will be offered to choose your source and destination help desks. First, connect your source Zendesk account. All you need to do is provide its URL, click continue, and log in to the instances as you usually would. Thus, you will provide the tool with the required access so that it can copy and transfer your data from one account to another.

3. Then, connect your target Zendesk. In the URL field, enter the link to the target brand (go to Admin>Manage>Brands>Click on the target brand> Copy the Subdomain name).

You can see how to add another brand to your Zendesk in this article if you haven’t created one yet.

4. Then, you will be asked to choose from the objects for your data migration which are stated in the list above.

5. As soon as you pick objects for your data migration, you will have to manage the standard and custom ticket fields. Make sure they correspond to each other in both accounts to avoid mismatches.

6. When done with field mapping, our tool will perform a free demo migration process, which is a required step of any migration with our service. Demo migration implies the tool transferring random 20 records with all related data between the instances. It allows you to see and check the result before starting the full process. Our tool will also estimate and display the price of the full data migration. Make sure you thoroughly check the demo migration results before you move on to the full process.

You can see how to check the demo results here. 

7. If you’re satisfied with the demo result, you can proceed to the payment and, when it’s complete, start a full data migration to finally merge your Zendesk instances. 

Well done! 

So, here is a full process of merging two Zendesk accounts into one. If you’re interested in migrating your historical data to a new Zendesk account, feel free to use this short guide. Or, you can also turn to our Help Desk Migration to complete this kind of complex process for you. You can always check us out in the Zendesk marketplace and contact us if you’re interested.