How to add a cool-down period to satisfaction surveys

We use our own survey platform to send satisfaction surveys 24 hours after a ticket has been solved (using the Zendesk automations). Because we don't want to over-question our users, though, we add a cooldown period using a combination of tags, triggers and automations. 

Add a custom user field in Zendesk

First add a custom user field to your Zendesk:

• Question type Drop-down list.
• Field title = “Send survey?”
• Add two drop-down options: “Yes” and “No“.
• The corresponding tags are also “yes” and “no“. If you are already using these tags, you can of course change these to anything you like. Remember that some conditions or actions are based on these tags so make sure to use the correct tags.

Add a new automation

This automation will make sure that the Send survey? field is set back to “Yes” after the cool-down period. That way a new survey invitation can be sent when the requester contacts your support team again. And the ticket can finally be closed as this will be the final action to take on it.

1. Go to the Admin section in Zendesk and click on Automations.
2. Click on Add automation.
3. Give it a meaningful title, e.g. “Change “send survey?” to “yes” after 28 days and close ticket”.
4. Add the following Conditions.
   • Ticket: Tags contains at least one of the following: csr: this tag was added by the “Send survey 24 hrs after ticket is solved” automation. You want to be sure that only those tickets are affected.
   • Ticket: Hours since solved (calender) greater than 672: this adds a cool-down period of 4 weeks (672 hours equal 28 days). If you want to send a new survey after 2 weeks (14 days) instead of 4 you put 336 hours (14 days x 24hrs).
   • Ticket: Status is Solved: one of the actions in this automation will be to add a tag ‘csr’ (see below). This is to make sure you only send the survey invitation once.
   • Requester: Send survey? is No: only when this value is “No” should it change back to “Yes”.
5. Add the following Actions.
   • Requester: Send survey? is Yes: you need to set it back to “Yes” so that a new survey invitation can be sent next time this person contacts your support team.
   • Ticket: Status is Closed: as the status was still “Solved” you can now change it to “Closed”.
6. Click on Create automation.

Add a new trigger

This trigger will recognize when a survey is NOT sent. That way you can recognize these tickets and close them faster.

1. Go to the Admin section in Zendesk and click on Triggers.
2. Click on Add trigger.
3. Give it a meaningful title, e.g. “Add tag “no_csr” when no survey sent”.
4. Meet all of the following conditions:
   • Ticket: Status changed to solved: this trigger should fire as soon as a ticket is set to “Solved”.
   • Requester:send survey? is No: the tag ‘no_csr’ should only be added if no survey is sent to the requester this time.
   • Ticket: Tags contains none of the following: no_csr, csr: “no_csr” is the tag this trigger will add, you only want to add this tag if it’s not already there. The tag “csr” is added when a survey is sent. You don’t want to add a “no_csr” tag if a survey was actually sent!
5. Perform these actions:
   • Ticket: Add tags: no_csr: you’ll be able to recognize these tickets and create separate rules for them (as we’ll be doing in this article as well).
6. Click on Create trigger.

Edit 2 existing automations