IMPORTANT NOTE: Gainsight is upgrading Connectors 2.0 with Horizon Experience. This article applies to tenants which are yet to be upgraded to the Horizon Experience of Connectors 2.0. If you are using Connectors 2.0 with Horizon Experience, you can find the documentation here.

Zendesk Integration allows you to integrate Zendesk within Gainsight, including syncing Zendesk tickets with Gainsight. The integration also allows you to generate strategic reports on Zendesk tickets within Gainsight. In addition, you can view the Customer 360 page in Zendesk. Our two-way integration provides information and collaboration tools to Customer Support and Customer Success, so they can deliver the best customer experience.

Benefits of the integration include:      

  • Delivering superior Support by understanding the Customer through a Gainsight widget in Zendesk

  • Seeing the full picture of Customer Success with Zendesk data in Gainsight

  • Coordinating across Customer Success and Support Teams by creating and linking CTAs to Zendesk tickets from either App

IMPORTANT:

  • All of the existing Custom fields, Assignee name, and Assignee email ID fields will be synced to the Zendesk Tickets collection. Admins do not have control over which custom fields are synced at this time.
  • There is a per month cost to access both the Gainsight widget in Zendesk and the data sync into MDA. You will need to purchase licenses from Gainsight for your support staff in Zendesk. If you are interested in this integration, please contact your CSM or sales rep for more information.

To use the Zendesk and Gainsight Integration, you must perform the following steps:

  1. Install the Gainsight app on Zendesk from Zendesk Marketplace.
  2. Integrate Zendesk with Gainsight.
  3. Sync Zendesk tickets with Gainsight.
  4. Map Zendesk Organization Tickets to an appropriate account/customer.
  5. Optionally, map Zendesk tickets to CTAs.
  6. Generate reports.

Additional Resources:

SFDC Admin & Zendesk Admin Involvement

Your SFDC Admin needs to be the one to initialize the sync, but a Zendesk Admin is the one that needs to enter in their credentials to complete the process. If the person initializing this sync is not a Zendesk Admin, it throws a “forbidden access from Zendesk”.

Integrate Zendesk with Gainsight

Before you integrate Zendesk with Gainsight, you must switch on Authorize MDA and install the Gainsight app on Zendesk.

  1. Navigate to Administration > Connectors > Customer Support > Zendesk; then click the Zendesk toggle button to the ON state.

Or, you can connect to Gainsight from your Zendesk account using the Gainsight app, which is downloaded from the Zendesk Apps Marketplace.

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  1. Enter your subdomain in the enter subdomain textbox. For example, gainsight; then click Authorize. A new page opens up that asks for Zendesk subdomain credentials.

    Note: When syncing Zendesk tickets, ensure that you are an Admin and not an Agent or an End-User. Otherwise, Zendesk ticket sync will not work as expected.
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  1. On the Zendesk subdomain authentication page, have your Zendesk Admin enter their Email and Password; then click Sign in.
  2. After Sign in, click Allow to grant permission to the Gainsight app to access your Zendesk account. Once the authorization is successful, a message appears. The Gainsight app now gets integrated with Zendesk.
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Info: Apart from mapping organizations and Zendesk tickets to Gainsight, this permission will also allow you to create and link CTAs from Zendesk.

Sync Zendesk Tickets with Gainsight

After you have integrated Zendesk with Gainsight, you are now ready to Sync Zendesk tickets with Gainsight.

Note: When syncing Zendesk tickets, ensure that you are an Admin and not an Agent or an End-User. Otherwise, Zendesk ticket sync will not work as expected.

  1. Go to Administration > Connectors > Zendesk; then click Enable Sync.
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  1. Under the Information window:
  • Select an appropriate date in Sync tickets and related data from. For example, 11/6/2015. This is the starting date from when you would like your Zendesk data to be synced with Gainsight.
  • Select the appropriate time in the Sync everyday at drop-down boxes.

Note: The selected time is per the UTC time zone.

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  1. Click ENABLE SYNC. The scheduler is created and Zendesk data starts synchronizing with Gainsight.
    Note: The syncing process starts at the specified time. Currently you do not receive any notification on sync completion.
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Info: If you Revoke the Zendesk access, the following dialog box appears.

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CAUTION:  If you click REVOKE, all data loaded into your tickets through the Zendesk connector, is lost (and not just the mappings). You cannot recover this data. 

Map Zendesk Organization Tickets to Account/Customer

After you have integrated and synced Zendesk tickets with Gainsight, you must now map Zendesk organization tickets to an appropriate account/customer.

To map Zendesk organization tickets to an appropriate account/customer:

  1. Login to your Zendesk account and go to the page where all of your tickets are listed.
  2. Click a ticket; then in the right hand side pane, go to Gainsight.
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Info: The Gainsight app offers account/customer name suggestions based on the Organization name in Zendesk, the customer email domain from which the ticket is raised, and the email ID in contacts.

  1. Enter the account/customer name in the text box and click on the appropriate name that appears.
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  1. Click Yes. The selected ticket gets linked to the account/customer entered. In addition, all the tickets under the selected Zendesk organization are automatically linked to the entered account/customer. For example, if your organization name in Zendesk is Abbet and you have mapped a ticket from this organization with an appropriate account/customer in Gainsight, all tickets under Abbet are automatically linked to the entered account/customer.

Map Zendesk Tickets to CTAs

Once the Zendesk tickets are linked to an account/customer, you can now link Zendesk tickets to one or more CTAs.

To map Zendesk tickets to CTAs:

  1. Login to Zendesk and go to the Gainsight app, which appears in the right hand side pane.
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  1. Click the Gear icon (Gainsight App Menu) and then click Calls to Action.
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  1. Perform either of the following options:
  • Click Link to an existing risk CTA to link the Zendesk ticket to an existing CTA in Gainsight. Enter the appropriate CTA name in the textbox and then click it.
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The linked CTA then appears as shown in the following image. You may unlink the CTA using Unlink.

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  • Click Create new risk CTA to link the Zendesk ticket to a new CTA, which you can create from Zendesk. Then enter appropriate values in the required fields and click Save.
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Note: We support only Risk type CTAs.

Info:

  • When you map a CTA or create a new one, the Zendesk ticket ID is automatically populated in the Comments section and is linked to the appropriate Zendesk ticket. This comment gets prepended to the existing comments, if any. In addition, these details are removed from the Comments section when you unlink a CTA.
  • You can use the View in Gainsight link to view the CTA in Gainsight.
  • Once a CTA is created, you cannot delete it. However, you can only unlink a CTA.
  • A CTA can have multiple Zendesk tickets associated with it. All of these tickets will display in the Comments section.

Generate Reports

You can generate meaningful reports, such as the number of open and closed tickets, or number of tickets by priority and type, and add these reports to a Customer 360 section.

Report Examples

The following is a report on all closed Zendesk tickets:

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The following is a report on all open Zendesk tickets:

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The following is a report on Zendesk tickets by priority and type:

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Gainsight App Menu in Zendesk

The Gainsight App menu in Zendesk helps you visualize an account’s/customer’s summary, attributes, usage data, calls to action, and organizational mapping. On Zendesk, in the right hand side pane, click the Gear icon to populate the Gainsight App menu.

Note: In all the menu tabs, except Organization Mapping, if you click the account/customer name, a new tab displaying the Customer 360 appears.

If you don't see any data appearing in the Customer360, you need to create a UI View.

  1. In Gainsight, navigate to Administration > Analytics > UI Views.
  2. Click New to add a new UI and under Tab Name, select Customer360. (If you already have a section with this Tab Name, you won't see the option in the dropdown.)
  3. Enter "Customer 360" as the View Name.
  4. Select the attributes to include in the view and click Save. (The top 10 fields will appear in the Zendesk widget.)
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Summary: This Gainsight App menu provides the summary of an account/customer similar to the Customer 360.

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Account Attributes: This Gainsight App menu displays the attributes of an account/customer.

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Usage Data: This Gainsight App menu helps you visualize the various measures that you have defined for an account/customer.

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Calls to Action: This Gainsight App menu helps you access the calls to action associated with a Zendesk ticket. For more information, refer to Map Zendesk Tickets to CTAs.

Organization Mapping: If you have mapped an organization incorrectly, you can use this Gainsight App menu to unlink the organization and select the appropriate one. For more information, refer to Map Zendesk Organization Tickets to Account/Customer.

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Limitations

  • You can integrate an SFDC org with a Zendesk account. Therefore, if you are piloting this connector in a Sandbox environment, you must revoke Zendesk access before integrating Zendesk with your production Salesforce org.
  • As of now, we do not handle chatter posts in the Comments section.
  • If you delete an account/customer from Salesforce, you must go to appropriate Zendesk ticket > Gainsight App menu > Organization Mapping and then click Unlink Account. The account/customer that was deleted from Salesforce gets unlinked. You can then map that ticket to another appropriate account.

Notes

  • All the Custom fields are synced from Zendesk.
  • Zendesk Organizations can be mapped to Gainsight customers automatically. Gainsight provides support for bulk mapping. For more information about how to accelerate and automate the process of mapping Zendesk Organizations to Accounts, see the Bulk Mapping of Zendesk Organizations to Accounts article.
  • After integration, if you are unable to find the Gainsight app, on your Zendesk ticket screen, click on the Apps button.
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  • When turning on the Zendesk connector, a browser-pop up blocker can prevent the “sign in” page from loading.