On this put up, we’re going to learn to implement buyer help capabilities utilizing a minimal code strategy and counting on third occasion companies. There are plenty of conditions through which you would possibly must implement some buyer help capabilities. Perhaps you might be growing your personal product, or perhaps you might be working for a corporation that should enhance their operations.
With the arrival of COVID-19, e-commerce has change into a significant concern for many companies. Having a great buyer help technique in place is a should nowadays. On-line customers demand options like on-line stay chat or multi-channel communication and count on excessive responsiveness from on-line companies.
The pandemic has generated unprecedented ranges of uncertainty for enterprise they usually want to have the ability to adapt within the shortest time attainable. Because of this, we’re going to actually on third occasion companies and use a minimal code strategy. This permits us to dramatically cut back the time to market and improvement value. Operational value can also be extremely versatile as a result of each Zendesk and Azure can adapt their choices and costs to our enterprise scale and wishes.
The very first thing we’re going to do is to go to https://www.zendesk.com/ and create an account. I can’t doc how to do that as a result of Zendesk may be very intuitive and it has excellent documentation.
After creating the account, you possibly can go to the settings web page and go to the channels part to search out out your help electronic mail:
The format of this electronic mail handle needs to be help@yourcompany.zendesk.com. You will have to recollect this handle as a result of we’re going to want it later.
We are able to then go to the widget part underneath the channels part to allow the contact kind and the net chat options:
If you happen to go to the settings it is possible for you to to search out the set up information:
All that you must do is so as to add a script tag to your web site’s supply code:
<script id="ze-snippet" src="https://static.zdassets.com/ekr/snippet.js?key=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"></script>
We’ve got enabled the contact kind widget which is displayed when there are not any buyer help brokers on-line:
We’ve got additionally enabled the stay chat widget which is displayed when buyer help brokers are on-line:
Somewhat icon will probably be then displayed on the underside proper of your webpage. When a consumer clicks on the icon, the contact kind or the stay chat kind will probably be displayed.
Ideally, we need to have a single level to handle all our buyer request. The request could have originated in our web site, our electronic mail or social media:
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Internet: We are actually able to handle requests that originated on our web site.
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Electronic mail: Managing electronic mail requests could be achieved by enabling electronic mail forwarding from one in all your organization electronic mail addresses to your Zendesk electronic mail handle.
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Social media: You possibly can go to the channel settings in Zendesk to attach your social media accounts with Zendesk.
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Telephone calls. Zendesk additionally means that you can handle cellphone calls as buyer requests tickets. You possibly can be taught extra utilizing the Zendesk documentation.
Generally, the default Zendesk implementation could be sufficient to get began. Nonetheless, in my case, I wanted an extra customized contact kind:
I wanted this way to be extremely seen and the underside proper “assist” button didn’t have sufficient visibility for me. The webform was carried out utilizing React and Formik.
I wished to ship the request that originated utilizing this way to Zendesk. The simplest resolution could be to ship an electronic mail to the Zendesk help electronic mail handle. We have to implement an HTTP POST endpoint that takes the shape particulars as JSON and ship an electronic mail to the Zendesk help electronic mail handle. I wished to implement this with as little code as attainable and the very first thing that got here so my thoughts was to make use of an Azure perform.
Utilizing an Azure perform would require us to outline an HTTP set off and the code that sends the e-mail. We would want to handle the permissions so our electronic mail server permits us to ship an electronic mail. This wasn’t a large job nevertheless it required me to save lots of the code in a repository, deploy it, and many others. It was an excessive amount of work for one thing so easy. I wished to discover a higher approach and that’s how I ended up utilizing Azure Logic Apps.
We are able to go to the Azure portal and create a brand new Azure Logic App, then use the designer to create the logic guidelines of our app. The very first thing that we have to do is to outline an HTTP set off for our HTTP POST request:
You possibly can paste an instance of the physique of your request and the Logic App designer will robotically translate it into the request schema.
Once you save your logic, Azure will generate an URL which you can invoke out of your app.
The second factor that we have to do is so as to add a step:
We have to add a step that can return an HTTP response:
We then want so as to add a parallel step to ship an electronic mail. In my case I take advantage of Gmail however there are different integrations accessible.
We have to extract the information from the unique HTTP request so as to add it to the e-mail contents. We are able to do that utilizing an expression:
We are able to use triggerBody() to entry the request physique and json(triggerBody()) to rework it into JSON. We are able to then entry the properties within the request physique as follows json(triggerBody()).firm.
We are able to then save every little thing and two assets ought to have been created:
We are able to then invoke the HTTP set off in our logic app by sending an HTTP request from the net app:
const response = await fetch(`INSERT_THE_TRIGGER_URL_HERE`, {
technique: "POST",
physique: JSON.stringify(values),
});
const json = response.json();
You possibly can then use the browser developer instruments to see if the request was profitable:
And at last, head to the Azure Logic App monitoring part to see if all of the steps labored as anticipated. The monitoring instruments with offering you with some particulars if one thing fails:
If every little thing labored you need to now have a brand new ticket in your Zendesk buyer help dashboard:
The operational value of working this logic app is sort of zero and we are able to get began with Zendesk for simply $60 a yr. We are able to now ship knowledgeable buyer help expertise on a price range and in just some hours!
As we are able to see Azure Logic apps will help us to resolve real-business wants with nearly no code. This permits us to maneuver quicker and adapt quicker in a time of unprecedented uncertainty.
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