I was recently asked what questions do I need answers to in order to build out your new Zendesk? Here is a list of things I'll need to know from you so we can design the right deployment:
Are you going to use Zendesk for one team such as IT or more than one team? If one team, does the team have different specialties?
This will help me determine what groups to configure.
What kinds of tickets does each team handle? In other words, what is your service catalogue?
This will help determine what custom fields and possibly additional forms we will need to set up. For example, IT teams tend to want to route and categorize based on:
- Hardware vs Software vs Networking
- Bugfix, enhancement, maintenance or access
Will you expect your users to interact via email only? Will you prefer a Portal Form for users? Chat/Talk?
This helps shape forms, channels and triggers we'll want to set up.
Do you want bump-bump-solve?
Functionality to "bump" a customer once or twice before auto-solving the ticket due to no response is a custom setup that I've done dozens of times.
Do you have a target to respond within a certain amount of time?
When a customer is newer to ticketing systems, I usually concentrate on FRT SLA (First Response Time Service Level Agreement). Over time, you may want to add SLAs for Time to Resolve, Customer Wait Time, etc.
Does your team like to "take" the ticket or need to be "pushed" tickets?
This will help us design Views and Round Robin apps available to accommodate your team's preference.
What does your company like to sound like when talking to customers?
This will help me customize your Ticket Received and Updated notifications and form the basis for macros as well.
Do you have certain sections of users that are VIPs and should receive special treatment? Do you have different support levels such as Platinum, Gold, Silver, etc?
This will help determine whether we should set up Organizations and special routing/field setting triggers.
What are your escalation processes?
Many times, we can utilize Zendesk groups and/or SLAs for this, other times we also need to offer customers a way to raise an escalation.
What will be important to report on?
Many times, customers are satisfied with the out-of-the-box Explore reports. Other times we need to customize it to fit your needs.