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Zendesk integration
Zendesk integration

How to escalate and categorize customer feedback from Zendesk to Harvestr.

Valentin Huang avatar
Written by Valentin Huang
Updated over a week ago

If you are using Zendesk as a customer support tool, it is probably a major product feedback channel for your company.

To help you keep track of this valuable customer feedback and merge it with your other feedack channels, we have built an integration that allows support agents to push relevant Zendesk tickets directly into your Harvestr inbox, and even categorize feedback right from Zendesk.  

How does the integration work? 

Prerequisites

In order to use our Zendesk integration, all you need is:

  • a Zendesk admin account

  • a Harvestr account and a Harvestr API key

Once the integration is set up and authorized by one of your company's Zendesk admin, any Zendesk agent will be able to use the app without them needing a Harvestr account.

How to integrate Harvestr to your company's Zendesk account

1. Install the Harvestr app in Zendesk Support 

Requirements: you must have administrator permissions in Zendesk Support to set up the integration.

You can find and install the Harvestr app from the Zendesk apps marketplace.

Starting the installation process will bring you to an installation page within Zendesk, where you will be asked an "Authentication token".

2. Generate and copy a Harvestr API key

To get this token, jump to your Harvestr integrations settings. In the Zendesk section, you will be able to generate a Harvestr API key and to copy it by clicking on it.

3. Enter the API key in your Zendesk account

Now that you have this key, jump back to the Harvestr app installation settings in Zendesk. These settings are always accessible in Admin - Apps - Manage - Harvestr - App configuration.

Enter your Harvestr API key into the corresponding "Authentication token" field. 

Note: If you want to restrict access to your app to just administrators or just agents, click Enable Role Restrictions before installing and choose the users. When the process is complete, your app should appear in your 'currently installed' apps.

Once you have entered the key and set up restrictions if needed, press the install button. 

Harvestr will now appear in your "Currently installed" apps in Zendesk and if you click on it, it should be marked as "Enabled".

4. Finish the installation in Harvestr

After installing the widget in Zendesk, go back to the integration's settings in Harvestr to finish the installation.

At step 4, enter your Zendesk support base url and click next. This will open an oauth window where you need to authorize Harvestr to connect to your Zendesk account.

Congrats, your support team can now use the Harvestr integration in Zendesk!

Sending Zendesk tickets to Harvestr

Sending a ticket to the Harvestr inbox

To use your newly installed integration, open a Zendesk ticket, click the Apps button in the upper-right corner and you will see the Harvestr widget appear. If not, just click on the Refresh button above. 

When a support rep gets a message in Zendesk from a customer which is interesting for the product team, like a feature request, all he needs to do is to click on the "Send to Harvestr" button to push the whole ticket to Harvestr for the product team.

You will then get the ticket in your Harvestr inbox with all the messages, the identity and the email of the Zendesk requester if they are available in Zendesk. 

Categorizing feedback from Zendesk

If the feedback is related to a topic that already exists in your Harvestr account, support reps can also link the conversation to an existing discovery.

By clicking on the "Link to discovery button", they will see the list of Components and Discoveries that already exist in your Harvestr organization. They will then be able to search and select the right Discovery.

The conversation will then be sent straight to the Archived folder of your Harvestr inbox, and will be linked to the right Discovery.

Processing Zendesk tickets in Harvestr

In Harvestr, you will get all these tickets in your inbox, along with all the other tools you have connected to centralize customer feedback.

For each Zendesk ticket that gets sent to Harvestr, we import all the messages and users that belong to this ticket.

You also have a button with the Zendesk logo at the top of the message with the link of the ticket in Zendesk. This allows you to jump quickly to the Zendesk ticket if you need to get more context.

Then, thanks to our homemade selector, you can capture product insights from these Zendesk tickets and link them to other insights and features you are working on in Harvestr.

Closing the loop with your support team and customers

In Harvestr, you can set notifications that will be sent to Zendesk as internal notes, in order to let support agents know about the status of the feedback they send to Harvestr. To set these notifications, go to your Zendesk integration settings in Harvestr and activate the notifications you want to send to Zendesk.

3 types of notifications can be sent back to Zendesk:

1) When the ticket sent from Zendesk is read in Harvestr

2) When the ticket sent from Zendesk is linked to a Discovery in Harvestr

3) When the linked Discovery is set to specific states

For each notification, you can also choose to create a follow-up ticket if the ticket has been closed, by selecting the "Reopen if closed" option.

With these notifications, you can easily close the loop with your customers when a feature they are interested in has been released!

FAQ

1. All the messages and notes of a ticket (from your users and teammates) will be sent to Harvestr

2. If you do not see the escalated tickets in your Harvestr inbox, try to refresh it

3. You can only have a single version of a given Zendesk ticket in your Harvestr account. Therefore, a ticket cannot be sent again to your your Harvestr unless you delete the previous version forever from your Harvestr bin

If you have requests or ideas about how we could improve our Zendesk integration to fit your workflow better, shoot us a message!

4. If a ticket is sent to Harvestr and that new messages are added to the ticket in Zendesk afterwards, theses messages will be automatically synchronized in Harvestr.

If the synchronization does not work anymore, try the following steps:

a. In the Zendesk integration settings in Harvestr, click on "Remove Zendesk integration"

b. In Zendesk, go to the parameters and then in triggers, look for the "Harvestr triggers" and the delete them

c. In the Zendesk integration settings in Harvestr, reconnect the integration in step 4 by entering your Zendesk base URL and reconnecting Zendesk to Harvestr (a person with Zendesk Admin rights will need to put their credentials at that step).

d. Go to one of the Zendesk tickets that were not synced in Harvestr. If it is still not synced, launch a manual sync.

To centralize all your product feedback, you can also have a look at our Email, Slack, Freshdesk, Intercom and Zapier integrations.  

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