How to Customize Zendesk’s Settings For Your Small Business: 5 Must-Know Tips

Zendesk is a great help desk platform that is packed with useful features and integrations. Because of its versatility, it’s an essential tool for all types of businesses, no matter their size. Even though Zendesk can be implemented almost effortlessly by small businesses, there are some advanced settings that you might want to check out. So if you’re ready to get the most out of your Zendesk account, keep reading for more details!

Section 1: Know Your Audience

When you’re setting up a Zendesk account for your business, it’s important to know your target audience and the types of customers you’ll be serving. Knowing your audience will help you determine how many agents you need, how many support agents are available, and even the type of support you’ll be providing. For example, if you’re providing tech support to SMBs, then you’ll want to make sure your Zendesk account has the ability to handle their needs. If you don’t have the right amount of agents available, your customers will have a poor experience and may even abandon your product.

Section 2: Set Up Business Hours and SLAs

The first thing you should do is set up your business hours and SLAs. While you can use Zendesk to provide support 24/7, you’ll want to make sure customers know when you’re available. This way, customers know when they can expect an answer. You can do this by setting up your business hours in the general settings tab. You can also set up SLAs for different departments and for different channels. These settings will help you determine what your customers should expect from each department in terms of response and resolution times. It’s also a good idea to set up escalations policies. This feature allows you to route issues to different groups of agents when your normal support queue is full and responses are slow.

Section 3: Don’t Forget to Set Up Zendesk Satisfaction Surveys

Many customers appreciate it when you’re able to resolve their issues and provide excellent support. You can use Zendesk to encourage customers to leave feedback and rate your support team. To do this, you first have to set up satisfaction surveys inside your Zendesk account. This way, you can collect feedback from customers and see how you’re doing in the eyes of your customers. Keep in mind that you can set these surveys up for different departments. This allows you to get specific feedback from each department.

Section 4: Use Zendesk Triggers and Automation

Triggers are a feature that allows you to automate certain tasks on your Zendesk account. For example, you can set up a trigger that will respond automatically when someone creates a post on your Facebook page with the #help hashtag. This is just one example of a trigger. It’s a great way to reduce the amount of work your team has to do and can save you a lot of time.

There are several triggers that you can set up on your Zendesk account, so make sure to check out the trigger settings tab for details. Automation is another helpful feature that you can set up on your Zendesk account. It allows you to get creative and set up rules that will trigger certain actions. For example, you can set up an automation rule that will close a ticket after it’s been open for 24 hours with no response from your customer.

Section 5: Use Escalation Rules

When you set up an escalation rule, you’re telling Zendesk to escalate a ticket to a different agent if your initial assignee can’t resolve the issue. This feature is helpful when you have a ton of tickets and you want to make sure all of them are resolved. Keep in mind that you can only set up these rules for specific tickets. When a ticket is escalated, this rule can determine what the agent’s skill level should be, the priority of the ticket, and the ticket’s SLA.

Section 6: Use Simple Bots on Social Channels

One of the most popular features of your Zendesk account will be the social media bots. This is when you set up pre-written responses for common questions and have them automatically sent to your social media direct messages. For example, if your customers ask when your company is going to release a new product, you can automatically post a response that states the release date. This allows you to save time and money by not hiring someone to respond to these questions. You can also use WhatsApp automation to redirect inbound calls to text messaging, and implement a chatbot to handle simple requests without your agents having to be involved.

Section 7: Wrapping Up

When you first set up your Zendesk account, it can feel a bit overwhelming. Luckily, you can customize the settings of your account to suit your company’s needs. To do this, you’ll have to know your audience, set up business hours and SLAs, set up satisfaction surveys, use triggers and automation, use escalation rules, and create simple bots for social media. Once you do all of this, your business will have a more efficient help desk that will help you save time and money.
If you could use a little help getting this done, you might find our Zendesk Reignite service useful. We’ll review your Zendesk installation and advise on where you can optimize and improve it, as well as add advanced integrations and automation. And as we’re a certified Zendesk Partner you know you’re in safe hands.

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