Prompt and personalized service with a single view of your customer

Introduction

Customer service expectations in today’s world are immensely high. Delivering exceptional, highly personalized customer service requires an in-depth understanding of each customer's journey and empowering your agents. Leveraging the Zendesk Apps framework, you can create a custom Support app that combines data from various systems that store key customer data, providing your agents with a 360-degree customer view.

Scenario

Synergy Ltd recently noticed an increasing number of requests for their customer support agents requesting access to various business systems. Take John, as an example, who requested access to the company’s CRM and marketing system. John was finding that he was repeatedly reaching out to the Sales team on Slack to learn more about the customer he was serving. It could take hours to days for him to get the information he needed, leading to frustrated customers with unsolved queries.

Goals

• Enhance customer profiles to empower agents to provide more personalized and efficient service.
• Improve agent efficiency by enabling agents to issue refunds directly from the Agent Workspace, eliminating the need for agents to jump between Zendesk, an eCommerce system, and inventory management systems. Increased efficiency within tickets also means agents can handle more cases in the same timeframe, enhancing overall productivity.
• Reduce business costs by using fewer systems to house the information agents need.
• Increase customer loyalty and satisfaction by providing faster and more tailored resolutions.

As a solution, Synergy Ltd decided to give agents like John easier access to key customer data held in various business systems. This doesn’t mean giving them full access to all systems, but rather giving them selected access to key customer data that is automatically surfaced in the context of the ticket.

The ideal solution is to embed an app inside Zendesk Support, so agents like John can see a rich customer profile encompassing purchase history, preferences, loyalty status, and customer tier helping them to resolve queries promptly and with a personalized approach without leaving Zendesk Support.

What you’ll use

• Zendesk Apps Framework v2 powers the development of the app, which will reside in the ticket sidebar in Zendesk Support
• Zendesk Garden for the styling of the app
• APIs for the various business systems holding customer data that should be surfaced in the app

Approach

Functionality

Determine the key data the app should surface to support agents and the various systems in which this data is stored. You’ll likely need a separate app per system.

Design the user interface

After identifying the data you need to provide in this sidebar app, you can design a custom interface for it. Variations might be required for each respective system you're pulling data from.

Develop your sidebar app

Build your app using your standard development process leveraging the Zendesk Apps Framework and the guidance provided here.

Test and deploy app

Use the ZAT tool to run your app locally for testing purposes. Make sure your app's functionality, design, and data retrieval are working as expected. Once your app is working correctly, package it using the ZAT tool. Install the app in your Zendesk account or Zendesk sandbox environment and test it within the Zendesk Support.

Publish and distribute (optional)

Consider submitting your app to the Zendesk Marketplace, allowing other customers to discover and install your app to solve similar use cases.

Post-implementation agent experience

Following the implementation of your custom sidebar app in Support, agents can:

• Open and read assigned customer ticket: in the usual process for opening and understanding a customer query.
• Build a richer picture of the customer, their needs, and how best to help them. Agents, like John, can utilize information about the customer tier; whether they are a priority customer; their previous purchases, complaints, refunds; and other information that can assist him in resolving their query, without leaving the Agent Workspace.
• Provide prompt and efficient service with comprehensive customer data at their fingertips, within the context of the ticket. Agents can tailor their responses to the customer’s specific needs, providing a personalized and efficient service in less time than before.

Documentation

Zendesk Apps Framework - Getting started with ZAF
Learn how to build an app for Zendesk - Zendesk App Quick Start
Zendesk command line - Using ZCLI
Support app locations - Sidebar apps in Support